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Edited by E. Hershey Sneath, Ph.D., LL.D. 
Yale University 



THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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GEORGE FOX 



THE 
STORY OF GEORGE FOX 



BY 
RUFUS M. JONES 

M 

AUTHOR OF " ST. PAUL THE HERO," " HEBREW HEROES," ETC. 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1919 

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x 



EDITOR'S PREFACE 

The " Great Leaders' Lives" aims to meet the 
needs of moral and religious secondary education. 
Adolescence is pre-eminently the period of Ideal- 
ism. The naive obedience to authority character- 
istic of childhood is to a large extent supplanted 
at this time by self-initiative; — by self-determina- 
tion in accordance with ideals adopted or framed 
by the individual himself. Furthermore, the ideals 
of this period are concrete rather than abstract. 
They are embodied in individual lives, and, gen- 
erally, in lives of action. Hence biographies of 
great leaders appeal strongly to the adolescent. 
They furnish examples and stimulus for conduct 
along the higher lines. The " Great Leaders' 
Lives" will include a large number of volumes de- 
voted to the study of some of the greatest moral 
and spiritual leaders of the race. Although de- 
signed primarily for use in the class-room, they 
will serve admirably the purposes of a general 
course of reading in biography for youth. 

E. Hershey Sneath. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Drayton Boy i 

II. The Youth Seeking for Light 10 

III. Gathering the Children of the Light. . 18 

IV. A Great People to be Gathered 30 

V. The New Group of Friends in the North. 40 

VI. The Beginning of a New Era 50 

VII. The Meeting with Oliver Cromwell. . . 59 

VIII. In England's Worst Prison 69 

IX. Another Kind of Catastrophe 80 

X. The End of the Commonwealth Era. ... 93 

XL The Period of Fierce Persecution 102 

XII. Three Years in Castles 112 

XIII. United in the Immortal Seed 124 

XIV. Visiting the "Seed" in America 136 

XV. In Worcester Jail 149 

XVI. "All of God Almighty's Making" 162 



INTRODUCTION 

One of the most interesting periods of all 
English History is the period of the Common- 
wealth — in round numbers, 1640 to 1660. Great 
deeds were done then; great persons lived; great 
battles were fought; great writers wrote immortal 
books; great achievements were made for human 
freedom and a great awakening came to men's 
souls. Many of the noble figures and leaders of 
that age were young men, in the early bloom and 
vigor of their lives. It was a time of sunrise and 
promise and enthusiasm, and so it makes its peren- 
nial appeal of interest to those who are young. 
Milton and Cromwell, two of the greatest names 
in this famous epoch, are known to all my young 
readers, but George Fox, the hero of this story, 
is perhaps not so well known. His Journal, in 
which he told his own story, is very long and some 
parts of it not easy to read. Much has been written 
about him in large historical books and in big 
religious treatises, but not much has been written 
about his life in the manner and style that appeals 
to young people. If I have succeeded in making 
his life clear and vivid and real I know that you, 



X INTRODUCTION 

my young readers, will like him, as I do, and will 
feel a warm interest in him. 

He was an unusual person, different from others 
as a boy, and he remained different from others 
in his older years. He had almost no education. 
He never learned how to write well; nor could he 
spell correctly — a thing which most persons in 
his time had not learned to do. He lacked the 
skill and refinement which a good school might 
have given him. But in spite of his peculiarities 
and this lack of education he knew and loved 
outdoor Nature; he possessed great native gifts; 
he read the Bible until he almost knew it by heart; 
he had an honest, sincere soul; he was a born 
leader of men; he had a most remarkable expe- 
rience of God; he was ready to go through fire and 
water to perform his duty, and he won the love 
of men in an extraordinary way, somewhat as 
did St. Francis of Assisi, more than four centuries 
earlier. 

There are all kinds of heroes, but every hero, 
to be a hero, must face danger bravely. He must 
forget himself and live greatly for others. He 
must win for the race something that has not 
been won before. He must act so as to make his 
life and deeds an inspiration to those around him 
and to those who come after him. On all these 
counts I think you will agree with me that George 
Fox was a hero. One trouble with us, both young 



INTRODUCTION XI 

and old, is that we are inclined to take the easy- 
way of doing what others do, of sliding along the 
smooth path that people in general take, of going 
with the crowd, and of having little power of 
decision, and manly choice of will. It is worth 
while to stop now and then and read about one 
who could stand out alone and decide for himself 
what he believed was right; who had a moral 
backbone in his frame and who did not say things 
or do things just because that would make him 
popular and give him an easy time. The greatest 
thing about George Fox, and the most heroic 
thing, was his conviction of duty and his obedience 
to it. He seemed to hear a voice speaking in his 
soul, and when once he felt sure what course that 
voice inside pointed out, he took it forthwith, 
in spite of all obstacles and in the face of difficulties 
and dangers. In this respect he was like a still 
greater hero — St. Paul, who was " ready' ' at any 
moment to face danger or death and who could 
not be turned aside from the path which his soul 's 
vision marked out for him. "I am ready," he 
told his friends, "not to be bound only, but also 
to die at Jerusalem for the cause of the Lord 
Jesus." That was George Fox's way, as you will 
see, and he, therefore, proved to be a difficult man 
to bend or conquer! But it was not in his own 
strength that he was strong; it was through what 
he calls "the mighty power of God"' "Love the 



Xll INTRODUCTION 

truth more than all," he used to say, "and go on 
in the mighty power of God as good soldiers of 
Christ." "Every one who confronted him per- 
sonally," Professor William James of Harvard 
wrote about Fox, "from Oliver Cromwell down 
to magistrates and jailers, seems to have acknowl- 
edged his superior power." I hope that this 
short book may explain to you how he came to 
have this "superior power." 



THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 



THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

CHAPTER I 

THE DRAYTON BOY 

George Fox was born in the little hamlet of 
Fenny Drayton, which his autobiography, the 
Journal, calls "Drayton-in-the-clay," on the 
western edge of Leicestershire, England, in the 
year 1624. Two hundred and seventy-five years 
ago, when George was a youth, the country about 
Drayton formed a narrow strip of low, undrained, 
clay-formed, fen land, with lines of hills running 
north and south, both on the east and on the west 
of the hamlet. Bosworth-field where Henry of 
Richmond plucked the English crown from the 
head of Richard III., lies close to Fenny Drayton 
and only two or three miles away is the old town 
of Nuneaton where " George Eliot" was born. 
All the region about Nuneaton is thick with 
scenes made memorable in the early stories of this 
famous novelist, who was very unlike the George 
who was born in nearby Drayton. 

The actual house in which George Fox was 
born has fallen into ruins and disappeared, though 



1 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

the church where he went every week as a boy- 
still stands, but little changed in the almost three 
centuries that have passed. The solemn yew 
trees in the yard in front of the church look very 
much as they did when the tiny baby was brought 
there to be christened in 1624. The old manor- 
house of the Drayton squires, the noted Purefoy 
family, is also much the same as when the quiet, 
meditative boy watched the aristocratic family, 
with their boys and girls, come through their 
private door into the little church where he was 
sitting. 

While we are trying to imagine the Drayton 
church, with its Norman doorway, the two aisles 
and chancel, and its monuments to the famous 
Purefoys, we may as well try to think at the same 
time what the sermons were like in those distant 
days. While little George was growing up from 
childhood to youth England was becoming every 
year more strongly Puritan. England had, a 
hundred years before, in the time of the Reforma- 
tion, broken away from the old historic Roman 
Catholic Church and had established its own 
English Church, with the King at its head in 
place of the Pope. But the new Church was too 
much like the old one to suit some of the men and 
women of England. There were persons in all 
parts of the country who wanted a great many 
more changes made. These people wanted to 



THE DRAYTON BOY 3 

have the Church "purified" so that it would be 
more like the Church which they thought Christ 
had meant to create in the world. These stout 
Puritans not only wanted to change the Church, 
they also desired to change the state so that there 
would be more freedom and greater liberty for 
everybody. It seemed to them that James I. 
and still more Charles L, the new Stuart kings who 
came from Scotland to the throne after Queen 
Elizabeth, were taking away the hard-won rights 
and privileges of the English people. When 
George Fox was eighteen years old the Puritan 
party came into open conflict with the king and 
a great civil war was begun on the green fields of 
England between the Puritan forces and the 
Royalist forces. 

Two years before the beginning of the Civil 
War (1640) a new minister had come to the Dray- 
ton church, to preach to the people of the hamlet. 
His name was Nathaniel Stephens. He was thirty- 
four years old, a fine scholar from Oxford and a 
strong Puritan who knew exactly what he believed. 
Like most of the Puritan ministers of the time, 
he preached very long sermons and prayed long 
prayers. When he began to preach he started an 
hourglass running and, when the sand had all 
run out, he turned it again and went right on 
preaching, without thinking how tired the little 
boys' legs were in the hard pews. Like all the 



4 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

other Puritan ministers then, he preached almost 
every Sunday about Adam's "fall," and the sin, 
guilt and wickedness of all men, women and chil- 
dren in the world. He made life seem dark, sad 
and hard. He told his hearers in the Drayton 
church, over and over again, that God had chosen 
some people to be saved and some people to be 
lost; that even little children would be lost, if they 
were not "elected" to be saved, and then they 
would suffer forever and ever in hell with the 
wicked fallen angels. "Priest Stephens/' as 
George Fox always calls him, could talk for hours 
at a time of the way of escape from the " City of 
Destruction" to the "Celestial City," about 
which Bunyan wrote, and everybody learned to 
know what he was going to say as they heard him 
read his text from the great Bible on his pulpit 
desk. George, even while he was still very young, 
did not enjoy these sermons. They did not seem 
to him to fit what Jesus said in the gospels. He 
did not believe that God ever chose anybody to 
be lost. He did not think that it was Adam who 
made people do wrong; if they sinned it was their 
own fault. He could not see that these long 
sermons which the Puritan preacher gave them 
every Sunday made the people of Fenny Drayton 
any better or any more Christlike than they were 
before they heard his sad, solemn and tedious talk. 
But even if George did not believe all that "Priest 



THE DRAYTON BOY 5 

Stephens" said in his long hourglass sermons, 
and did not enjoy hearing so much about "Adam," 
and "sin/' and "elected," and "lost," at least 
these sermons set him to thinking, made him a 
quiet, solemn boy, and started him off on a new 
track, so that in the course of time, as we shall see, 
he became a new kind of hero. 

The father and mother of George Fox were poor, 
humble, hardworking people, but they were brave, 
upright and good. The father's name was Chris- 
topher, whom the neighbors called "righteous 
Christer," because he was absolutely straight 
and honest in his dealings. He was a weaver and 
worked with his hand loom in the little cottage 
where George was born. His mother's name was 
Mary Lago, who came of a family that already 
had its list of martyrs. She was different from 
the other women in Drayton — more educated 
and more finely cultivated — and though her sur- 
roundings were hard and mean, and her days were 
full of work, she was pure, lovely and noble- 
minded, and she knew how to understand, help 
and direct her unusual boy. His mother died in 
1664 when George Fox was fifty years old. When 
the news of her death reached him he went to a 
room in the inn where he was staying and sat 
alone in the stillness and thought of all her life 
had meant to him. As he sat alone with his 
sorrow and knew that he could never see his 



6 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

mother again on earth, suddenly he seemed to see 
her still alive with God in the eternal world and, 
as he says, "everlastingly with me over all." "I 
did verily love her as ever one could a mother," 
is his simple, beautiful word about her, "for she 
was a good, honest, virtuous, right-natured 
woman." As had been the case with Martin 
Luther, a hundred and fifty years earlier, here, 
again, was just the right kind of home and the 
fitting kind of father and mother to produce a new 
prophet who could be a leader of men. 

George was an odd, strange boy. He did not 
play games like other boys. He lived apart and 
wandered about alone, shy, grave and thoughtful, 
always "wondering." William Penn, who later 
knew him better than almost anyone else, says: 
"From a child he appeared of another frame of 
mind than the rest of his brethren: being more 
religious, inward, still, solid and observing beyond 
his years." He asked many questions and often 
sat alone, thinking and thinking. His great de- 
sire, even as a little boy, was to be pure and good, 
and he seems to have succeeded, for he says in his 
Journal, "When I came to eleven years of age, 
I knew pureness and righteousness." The thing 
which made him most different from the other 
people around him was that he was so unusually 
honest about everything he did. He seems to have 
got this trait from both his father and his mother. 



THE DRAYTON BOY J 

He never could pretend. He would not act as 
though he knew unless he really did know. He 
would not make believe he had something unless 
in very fact he had it. Even as a little boy he 
hated sham more than he hated anything else on 
earth. He was resolved that if he was going to 
live at all he would live a sincere life. We shall 
see that whatever else he is doing he is always 
trying to be genuine. 

While still hardly more than a boy he went to 
work for a man who was a shoemaker by trade. 
This shoemaker also kept sheep and cattle and 
George not only learned to cut out leather and 
to sew and peg shoes, but he also tended the sheep, 
washed and sheared them and helped sell the wool 
in market. His work with the sheep took him out 
into the fields and pastures where he was alone 
with nature and where he learned to love every- 
thing God had made and to feel himself, as he 
puts it, "in unity with the creation." 

Nature in the fields and hills and sky seemed 
to him full of beauty and order; what he could 
not understand was why men's lives were not more 
beautiful and orderly, as God meant them to be. 
He "wondered" over this problem more than over 
any thing else. Why, he asked again and again, 
are people so light and wanton? What makes 
them so hard and unkind to one another and to 
God's creatures? Why should they love to do 



8 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

wrong and spoil life which was intended to be 
always fair and joyous and beautiful? "Priest 
Stephens" kept saying in his sermons that it was 
all because Adam sinned and the world was ruined 
by the fall. But when the minister told them how 
to escape from sin, and how to be saved from it, 
why didn't they stop sinning and become pure and 
good? They acted as though they supposed that 
it was enough just to listen to the sermons, with- 
out doing anything more, or without changing 
their lives in any way. Religion was, thus, like 
having money put away in a bank and never using 
it. It seemed to George to be something that you 
heard about and talked about in a church, but 
not something that made any difference in the 
way you lived after you went home from church. 
He had an interesting word for that kind of a 
religious person. He called him a "professor," 
i. e., one who professes to believe the things which 
are preached in church, but who lives in the world 
exactly as though he did not believe them. 

One day all this about which he had long been 
thinking came sweeping over George's sensitive 
soul with such a rush that it almost overwhelmed 
him. He had gone to a market-fair in a nearby 
town and two "professors," one of them being 
George's cousin, asked him to go with them to an 
inn and drink beer. The two "professors" drank 
many mugs of beer and when George refused to 



THE DRAYTON BOY 



drink with them they tried to make him pay for 
what they drank. It shocked the gentle youth 
to see two persons who professed to be good Chris- 
tians, guzzling beer and acting as though they had 
no religion at all, and thereupon he put down a 
small piece of money, and walked out of the inn, 
and left the "professors" there alone. 

When he got home to Drayton he could not 
get this scene in the inn out of mind. It seemed 
to him only a vivid illustration of the way every- 
body was doing. The world seemed twisted and 
out of joint. People said one thing and did an- 
other. Religion looked like a hollow sham, a 
thing for show, not for daily practice. Poor, 
honest-hearted, pure-minded George Fox could 
not stand the discovery. It crushed his soul and 
broke his spirit. He could not sleep. He could 
not eat. He moaned and cried and wandered 
about alone, trying to understand the strange, 
wilderness world he was in. At length he decided 
to leave his home — it seemed as though God sent 
him out — and to go up and down the land seek- 
ing for light and endeavoring to find some help 
for his disturbed soul. He went out into the mys- 
terious world not knowing whither he went, but 
resolved to see if he could discover anywhere any 
real religion which made people's lives right, and 
gave them power to live by. 



CHAPTER II 

THE YOUTH SEEKING FOR LIGHT 

If George Fox had not been different from other 
boys he would very quickly have got over his 
strange sorrow on account of other people's shams. 
He would not have allowed that to spoil his ap- 
petite and disturb his sleep. But he was different 
from other boys and he could not get over his sor- 
row and depression. The world seemed one great 
question-mark to him and he didn't care about 
living if he could not find an answer to his myste- 
ries. He was nineteen years old when, in 1643, ^ e 
started out on his wanderings. He went to a great 
many English towns, and he seems to have tried 
in each place to find somebody who could help 
him out of his darkness into light. He had heard 
that there were people scattered over England, 
in out-of-the-way places, who were discovering 
new truth about God and man and life and the 
Church of Christ, and he hoped that he might 
fall in with some person or persons who could set 
him on the right track. England was seething 
with eagerness and enthusiasm. Religion was 
the main business and the great matter. George 
Fox was not the only one who was endeavoring 

10 



THE YOUTH SEEKING FOR LIGHT II 

then to find a fresh way of life. It was a seeking 
age and all sorts of new ideas were in the air, like 
thistle-down in autumn. Drayton was a little 
hamlet, and nobody came there with new thoughts 
and fresh truth. If George was to discover any- 
thing deep enough and great enough to satisfy 
his perplexed soul he knew that he must go out 
and hunt for it. And hunt he surely did! Every- 
body who was serious then was reading the Bible. 
Only a little while before this, in 1611, it had been 
translated into the wonderful English of the King 
James version. There was no other book like it. 
It was the most interesting one that had ever been 
put into a boy's hand and George, like all other 
serious persons then, was reading and rereading it. 
Often in his lonely room in some town, where he 
knew nobody, he would read and meditate till 
the sun went down. Other times he would walk in 
the fields, which he loved with a kind of poetic 
passion, and sit in hollow trees, or on the sheltered 
bank of a brook, and read the book that told him 
about God and man's true life. 

In his travels in pursuit of truth he went to 
London. But it seemed like a great, dark Babylon 
to him. He could find everything there but the 
one thing he was seeking. The city was full of 
interesting sights and wonderful things, but he 
could not find there any guide for his soul. He 
had an uncle, named Pickering, in London, who 



12 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

was a Baptist, but though the uncle and his Bap- 
tist friends were " tender" — by which word George 
Fox means serious, spiritual, earnest, sincere, 
devout — George felt that he could not get any 
help from them. He found that he could not talk 
freely with them about his condition, that they 
did not understand his troubles and that he could 
not join with them. London had no message of 
light for him. John Milton was there and John Pirn 
was there, — two Johns who were "well-beloved 
disciples of liberty/' — and the great Oliver, but 
even if he had found them they could not have 
helped him in his difficult quest. 

He heard that his parents and other relatives 
were troubled over his absence from home and so 
he came back from London to Fenny Drayton. 
Some of his relatives who did not understand him 
advised him to take a bride, as the same kind of 
people once told St. Francis of Assisi to do, but 
George told them he was seeking for wisdom and 
not for a wife! Others urged him to become a 
soldier and take his part in the civil war, but he 
felt that fighting with swords would not cure his 
soul or remove his load of trouble. At Drayton he 
talked much with "Priest Stephens" who some- 
times preached on Sunday the things which he 
had heard George say during the week, but the 
Puritan minister had no message of help for " Right- 
eous Christens" son. He was to George only a 



THE YOUTH SEEKING FOR LIGHT IJ 

"professor/' and not a "tender" man, nor a real 
guide of souls. 

He tried many other "priests" in the neighbor- 
ing towns, in the hope that they might have more 
light than the Drayton minister could give him, 
but they proved to be no better than he. One 
told him to try tobacco, another advised him to 
sing hymns. Some got angry with him and some 
made fun of him. But in one thing they were all 
alike, they had no light for him; they all seemed to 
him "miserable comforters." He walked seven 
miles to consult a priest at Tamworth, but he 
found him to be like the rest, "a hollow, empty 
cask," without anything inside. 

His sorrow and depression went so deep into 
his soul that it finally broke down his health and 
brought him into a dangerous physical and mental 
condition. He was a poor forlorn soul in a world 
of utter mystery. But it is sometimes darkest 
just before dawn, and so it proved to be now in 
George's case. Two years he had wandered about 
without any relief to his mind. He had found 
the ministers in the churches much more "empty" 
than he had expected to find them. He discovered 
nobody who seemed to be a real prophet and could 
speak living words of truth for God. But gradu- 
ally, in 1646, he began to realize that God himself 
was speaking to him in his own soul. Truths 
seemed to flash into his mind, like wavy stream- 



14 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

ers of northern lights. He would suddenly see 
a truth as though electric signs were signaled to 
him from a central station. It dawned upon him 
that God was the same now as when He revealed 
messages to prophets in olden times and could still 
reveal His will. He saw that temples and churches 
were not the most holy places; the soul of man it- 
self was the really holy place, for God and man 
could meet therein. He saw that any man could 
be a priest if he only learned how to hear the voice 
of God .within his soul and to obey it, and could 
tell others how to hear it and understand it. To 
do this one would not need to study theology 
for years and years in a university; it would only 
be necessary that one should be quick and sensi- 
tive to hear the divine voice in the soul and be 
ready and eager to do what God revealed there. 

As these truths flashed into George Fox's in- 
ner soul they gave him thrills of joy and relieved 
him, while they lasted, of his depression. But he 
was not yet sure enough of his new discovery to 
believe in it all the time. It would come in happy 
moments and then slip away and leave him dis- 
couraged again. It was a kind of a seesaw life, 
now up in the heights of vision and now dowji in 
the flats of life with no blue sky in sight. The same 
old wanderings continued, as though he were on 
a new quest for the Holy Grail; the search for 
helpers went on and the restless youth pored over 



THE YOUTH SEEKING FOR LIGHT 1 5 

the pages of his Bible, until he knew them almost 
or quite by heart. At last, one great and memor- 
able day, he discovered something which lasted; 
he saw a truth which did not vanish away. He 
saw that Jesus Christ who lived in Palestine 
centuries ago and helped men out of their sin 
and weakness, their sorrow and trouble, was still 
alive and unchanged in love and goodness. The 
only difference was that then He walked about 
in a body like other men and could be in only one 
place at one time, now He came as a Spirit within 
the soul and could be in all places at once, helping 
and healing, comforting and blessing all who needed 
Him, just as thousands of people at the same time 
can all have the warmth and light of the one sun. 

In the stillness of his soul George Fox heard 
Christ speaking to him so clearly that he could not 
mistake it. "I heard a voice," he wrote in his 
Journal, "which said, 'There is one, even Christ 
Jesus that can speak to thy condition 9 and when 
I heard it my heart did leap for joy." He felt 
now that he knew Christ in the same way that one 
knows a human friend. He had met Him; he had 
found Him. It was an experience and not a guess. 
The Holy Grail, then, was to be found within, 
and not in a distant country. It was as though 
he now had a pass key, a master key, which would 
open any door where he wanted to enter. He had 
discovered something better than men, better than 



l6 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

priests, better than books — the living Christ who 
could speak and teach and live in his own heart, 
just as the light and heat and power of the distant 
sun can be present here on the earth, where we 
need light and heat and power. 

Nobody can correctly understand George Fox 
and nobody can properly read the story of his 
remarkable life of heroism without hearing first 
what happened in his soul. We are so used to 
having all our stories tell about things that hap- 
pen in the world which we see with our eyes that 
it will seem odd to begin with this other kind of 
story, of what took place inside where there were 
no windows for any one to look in. 

Most of our heroes just do things, and we read 
about their deeds and are thrilled. Here we have 
a hero who cared more about being than about 
doing. It seemed to him no use to go out and do 
a lot of things if your soul was all wrong and your 
life all twisted out of shape. That was just the 
kind of sham which he hated most. He wanted 
to be so clear and transparent that if men, or even 
God, looked through him there would be only fair 
and beautiful things to see in the inside part of 
himself where he lived. 

Something like having God look through him 
did happen to George Fox. He thought he heard 
God say to him: "My love was always to thee and 
thou art in my love," and another time when he 



THE YOUTH SEEKING FOR LIGHT 17 

was walking in the fields, which always seemed full 
of God, he heard a voice that said, " Thy name is 
written in the Lamb's book of life. ,> Nothing 
else in the universe seemed so certain to him as 
the love of God. He might lose his eyes, as John 
Milton had done, and then he would not be able 
to see the hills and trees and sky, but he could 
not lose his real, inside eyes which saw the in- 
finite love of God. He knew there was evil in 
the world; that there were pain, sorrow and death; 
but greater than all these was the God who still 
loved and, in the end, would conquer. He says: 
"I saw that there was an ocean of darkness and 
death; but an infinite ocean of light and love 
flowed over the ocean of darkness. In that I saw 
the infinite love of God." 

Of course a man who sees a thing like that can 
be brave. Nothing on earth can defeat him, or 
conquer him. He has the key of his destiny in 
his own hand. 



CHAPTER III 

GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 

At first, after he had made his great discovery 
of the living Christ, George Fox did not yet know 
what he should do next. He had made no plan for 
his life. In his lonely wanderings he had hoped to 
find a people that had real spiritual religion and 
he had expected to join with them and live among 
them, if he ever found them. But now that, alone 
by himself, and without any human teacher to 
help him, he had found what he was seeking, the 
feeling soon broke in upon his mind that he ought 
to go forth into the world and tell everybody, 
who would listen, about the light and life of God 
in the soul of man. 

Before he was well started on his mission, how- 
ever, he had two moments of hesitation. One 
moment of hesitation came to him as he was walk- 
ing through the beautiful Vale of Belvoir (which 
he calls the "Vale of Beavor"). In the midst of 
the beauty and glory of this valley he began to 
"wonder," as so many other persons have done, 
whether, after all, everything in the world had 
not come by "Nature," by a simple, natural proc- 
ess. Is not, perhaps, Nature its own author, its 



GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT I9 

own maker and builder? Do not all things form 
and shape themselves from elements that were 
always there and that possess the power of chang- 
ing into other things? Are not the stars vital sub- 
stances which send out seeds of life to the earth, 
and even emit these souls of ours that shape for 
themselves bodies to live in? If this were so, 
then, there might not be any God. All things 
just came ! This idea got hold of George's thoughts 
there in beautiful "Beavor," as he slowly footed 
the winding road, and all his mind was clouded 
with doubts. There was no mission in the world 
for him, if God was not real. He could not preach 
about elements! All his high hopes and his new 
joy must vanish if the universe was nothing but 
natural matter with no inner Soul! He did now 
what he always did when he was in trouble, he sat 
down in the quiet and stillness, and waited for the 
Voice within him to speak. He hushed his argu- 
ments, he stopped his "wonderings," and just 
listened, like Elijah when the still small voice came 
to him. In a few minutes, a living hope arose 
within him and a true voice said, 'There is a 
living God who made all things/ and Fox adds, 
"My cloud vanished away, and life rose over it 
all; my heart was glad and I praised the living 
God." 

The other moment of hesitation was not be- 
cause of doubts which he had, but because the 



20 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

whole creation seemed to open its meaning and 
its secrets to him. It suddenly seemed as though 
he could see through everything and understand 
it all. "The creation was opened to me," he says. 
"All things were new; and all the creation gave 
another smell." "I saw the nature and virtues 
of things." It was as though he had passed up 
through the flaming sword of the Cherubim and 
had come into paradise and was like Adam before 
he fell, who could talk face to face with God and 
could see the natures of all things and give them 
their names and knew only purity and peace and 
joy. In this moment of rapture Fox wondered 
whether he should not go out and practice medi- 
cine to heal the wounds and pains and ills of the 
world, since "the creation was opened" to him so 
that he could discover all the healing virtues of 
things! But it soon grew clear to him that his 
work in the world was not to doctor men's bodies, 
but to help them find God and to cure their souls 
and to live pure lives. "The Lord," he says, 
"sent me forth to preach His everlasting gospel" 
— "to declare truth." In "powerful and piercing 
words" he began telling little groups of people, who 
had passed through experiences something like his 
own, about the living Christ who reveals His light 
and life and love in the soul of man. He opened 
his work of ministry in a very quiet way in the 
midland counties of England — Leicestershire, War- 



GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 21 

wickshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. One 
of his very first followers and disciples was a wo- 
man named Elizabeth Hooton who lived at Skegby, 
near Mansfield, where a small group of persons 
accepted his teaching. Fox himself says that "the 
Lord's power wrought mightily and gathered many 
of them," and he also says that "the Lord's power 
was wonderfully manifested at Mansfield and 
other towns thereabouts." Here the people who 
gathered around him, and were separated from 
the churches, came at first to be called "the Chil- 
dren of the Light," though they soon called them- 
selves "Friends." 

Fox's preaching in these early days was very 
simple and quite different from that in the Puritan 
churches. He asked people to stop arguing about 
Christ and turn their attention to the light of 
Christ in their own souls, to sit still and listen and 
to let God's grace and power work within them. 
Above everything else he told all his hearers that 
they must get all shams out of their lives. They 
must be what they professed to be and they must 
carry out all the truth which they discovered into 
action in daily life. They must stop being in- 
sincere. When they said anything they must 
mean it. 

Fox himself gave up observing all fashions 
and manners, customs and conventions which he 
thought had become hollow, empty and meaning- 



22 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

less. He resolved that he would not do anything 
for mere show. "When the Lord sent me forth 
into the world," he wrote in his Journal, "He 
forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low; 
and I was required to say Thee and Thou to all 
men and women, without any respect to rich or 
poor, great or small." He made a great point of 
treating everybody alike, of showing as much 
respect to a poor person that labored with his 
hands as to the wealthiest person who had every- 
thing done for him. He maintained that in the 
sight of God all were alike and all were precious. 
He wanted to spread in the world a religion and a 
way of life which would give everyone every- 
where a full chance to be the kind of person God 
in the creation meant him to be. He hoped, too, 
to change all hard customs, unfair laws and un- 
just systems which kept men bound and cramped 
and to help bring in a condition of things more 
like the Kingdom of God which Christ talked 
about. 

George Fox quickly found out how difficult it 
is to change the world and how much suffering it 
costs to live differently and to act differently from 
the way people in general live and act. He never 
stopped to consider the easy way. He challenged 
what seemed to him wrong regardless of what 
might happen. He got his first taste of the kind 
of suffering that was to come to him all the rest 



GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 2J 

of his life in the town of Nottingham, one Sunday 
morning in 1649. ^* e was walking along the high 
road, when from a hill-top he saw the spire of 
St. Mary's church. He could not bear the sight 
of church-spires. They seemed to him unneces- 
sary, useless and made for show. He had formed a 
great dislike of the Church as it was in his day, of 
the preaching which people had to listen to in 
the churches, and especially of the ministers who 
were, he thought, hollow and empty. When he 
saw a spire it aroused all his deep feelings of dis- 
like. The church-spire seemed to him to be the 
focus of the entire system which he disapproved. 
He had not yet quite learned to control himself and 
to see there was something true even in things 
which he disliked. As he caught sight of this 
Nottingham spire something powerfully moved 
him to go and "cry out against" what was going 
on in that church. When he got there he thought 
that the minister looked dull and stupid "like a 
lump of earth." So he himself began to tell the 
people in the church that God was ready to speak 
in their own souls; that if they would listen to Him 
and obey His voice the full day of life and glory 
would dawn in their own hearts and the day-star 
would arise in their souls and they would be able to 
understand God's living Word and serve Him 
without the help of priest and without long and 
tedious sermons. 



24 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

Quite naturally the minister did not like the 
interruption of his service, though the people who 
heard the stranger's words were amazed and could 
not for a long time "get them out of their ears." 
But while Fox was still speaking, some officers 
came up behind and seized him and put him in a 
nasty, foul-smelling prison. The head sheriff, 
named John Reckless, who had charge of him, was 
convinced of the truth which Fox preached about 
God and he and his entire family were changed 
and became "Children of the Light," and many 
others became "tender" when they felt the power 
of God break forth through his life and his words. 
A man whose soul had been touched came and 
offered to take George Fox's place in the prison 
and to suffer instead of him, if the judges would 
let Fox go. He was soon released from his first 
imprisonment without any substitute and allowed 
to go on his way in freedom. 

This experience in Nottingham had not made 
him any more careful or cautious. He was just 
as ready as before to cry out against things which 
he believed to be wrong or a sham. Coming into 
Mansfield-Woodhouse, where he calmed "a dis- 
tracted woman" who was "mended by the Lord's 
power" and became one of the "Children of the 
Light," Fox was "moved to go to the steeple- 
house," as he always called the church building, 
and "declare truth there." The people in this 



GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 2$ 

church did not wait for the officers. In Fox's own 
account of the affair, he says: "The people fell 
upon me in great rage, struck me down and al- 
most stifled and smothered me; and I was cruelly 
beaten and bruised by them with their hands, 
Bibles and sticks. Then they haled me out, though 
I was hardly able to stand, and put me into the 
stocks; and they brought dog-whips and horse- 
whips, threatening to whip me." Finally, he says, 
"the rude people stoned me out of the town for 
preaching the word of life to them, ,, "but the 
Lord's power soon healed me again. That day 
some people were convinced of the Lord's truth 
and turned to His teaching." 

At every town where he came in his travels 
some people were "convinced" and the more he 
was attacked and beaten the more people believed 
in his truth. In Market-Bosworth he was stoned 
out of the town, but some people were "loving" 
and others were "confirmed." An incident oc- 
curred at Twy-Cross which shows the heroic stuff 
and fiber of Fox's spirit. While he was visiting "a 
great man of the town," who was lying dangerously 
ill and needed spiritual help, a serving-man in the 
house came running out of a room with a naked 
rapier in his hand and, in a wild, mad way, threat- 
ened to thrust it into Fox's side. George says in 
his Journal: "I looked steadfastly on him and 
said, 'Alack for thee, poor creature! what wilt 



26 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

thou do with thy carnal weapon; it is no more to 
me than a straw/" 

At length in his journeyings he came to Derby 
where he was to spend a whole year in prison for 
"declaring truth." It all came from his bold and 
unrestrained method of "crying out against" the 
things which "struck at his life." He went to 
the Derby "steeple-house" on "a great lecture 
day," when distinguished vistors were preaching 
there, and after they had finished, Fox rose and 
gave them his message, which he believed was from 
the Lord. They at once arrested him and brought 
him before the magistrates, where he spoke with 
unusual boldness of the living Christ and of the 
triumphant life when Christ lives in an obedient 
man. It seemed to the magistrates too bold. 
They called it "blasphemy," against which there 
was a law, and they committed George Fox to the 
Derby jail for six months. 

While he was in the jail Fox had many visitors 
who came to ask him for help, or to discuss reli- 
gious questions with him. He wrote a great many 
papers and letters, explaining to the world his 
teachings and his practices and his desire for a 
better world. The keeper of the jail, who at first 
was very hard against him, became completely 
changed and very "tender." One evening George 
overheard the jailer say to his wife: "Wife, I 
have seen the day of judgment, and I saw George 



GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 27 

there, and I was afraid of him, because I had done 
him so much wrong, and spoken so much against 
him to the ministers and professors, and to the 
justices and in taverns and ale-houses/' A little 
later he came into Fox's room and said to him: 
"I have been as a lion against you; but now I 
come like a lamb, and like the jailer that came 
to Paul and Silas trembling." He asked if he 
might come and live in the room with Fox, and 
so it was arranged for the strange prisoner and 
his jailer to live together in the jail! 

The judges, too, were much impressed with the 
character and spirit of the prisoner. They tried 
to contrive some plan to set him free and to get 
him out of the jail, though they did not like to say 
that they were sorry for having put him in. They 
told him that he might have liberty to walk a 
mile in any direction he pleased, but George de- 
clined to take any walks until they had measured 
off an exact mile. When he did walk out on his 
mile trips, he went into the streets and market of 
Derby and "warned the people to repent of 
wickedness." 

It was here in Derby that the "Children of the 
Light" were first called "Quakers." One day in 
1650 when George Fox was in the Court and Justice 
Bennett, a distinguished judge, was questioning 
him, Fox declared that the time had come for men 
to quake and tremble before the Lord, and the 



28 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

Judge used words something like this, "So you 
are 'quakers' are you?" and the name stuck and 
soon came into general use. 

When the six months of the sentence were 
nearly expired some army commissioners came to 
the jail and tried to get George Fox to join the 
army of the Commonwealth and they promised 
to make him a captain. He told the commissioners 
that he was against all wars and could jtiot fight 
with arms against anybody. He said that he was 
living "in the virtue of that life and power that 
takes away the occasion for all wars." What he 
said to the commissioners so offended them that 
their "rage got up," and they ordered the jailer 
to put him into the "dungeon among the rogues 
and felons." "So I was had away," the Journal 
says, "and put into a lousy, stinking place, with- 
out any bed, amongst thirty felons, where I was 
"kept almost half a year." 

He was deeply affected by the evil condition 
of the prisoners in the dungeon and he wrote 
letters to the justices, showing them how hurtful 
it was to keep men in jails where they learned 
wickedness and became brutalized and much worse 
than they were before. He pleaded for a change 
in the laws which put men to death for small 
crimes and petty offenses. His tender heart was 
especially touched by the case of one poor woman 
in the jail who was to be executed for stealing. 



GATHERING THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT 29 

She was finally saved from the gallows and "be- 
came convinced of God's everlasting truth" — 
that is, she became one of "the Children of the 
Light." 

One day a "conjuror" who was in the jail 
frightened everybody, even the jailer himself, by 
threatening to raise the Devil and break down the 
house. It was an age when almost everybody 
believed in the power of witchcraft. Fox was not 
so easily scared. He says: "I was moved of the 
Lord to go in His power and rebuke him and say 
unto him: 'Come let us see what thou canst do; 
do thy worst!' I told him the Devil was raised 
high enough in him already, but the power of 
God chained him down: so he slunk away from 
me." 

George's relatives had tried in vain to get him 
out of the jail, for he would not budge until the 
magistrates who put him in were ready of their 
own accord to come and take him out. That is 
what they finally decided to do. In the winter 
of 1 65 1, after having passed six months in the 
common jail and six more months in the felon's 
dungeon, the magistrates opened his prison door 
and set him at liberty. 



CHAPTER IV 

A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED 

It will already have been discovered that George 
Fox was an unusual person. He was, as William 
Penn once said, "an original" and "no man's 
copy." It was impossible to foretell what he 
would do, for he did not take to the old ruts of 
custom or the formed grooves of habit. He cut 
out an unused path and marked a new course. 
And, in doing it, he never stopped to count the 
cost or to consider the abuse it might bring. He 
went forward and acted. Sometimes he made 
mistakes and took a false start and had to learn 
through bitter experience where the right road 
really was, but he was always trying to follow a 
divine light, and everybody could be sure that he 
was sincere, honest and brave. 

He was a striking, impressive man to look at. 
There was a certain majesty about his presence, 
his friend William Penn tells us. His eyes pos- 
sessed an extraordinary power and seemed to 
look right through a person. "Take thy eyes off 
me; they pierce me!" one man cried out as Fox 
steadily gazed at him. Ministers were often 
afraid to face him. When Francis Howgill saw 

30 ) 



A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED 3 1 

Fox look in on him through the door of Firbank 
Chapel as Howgill was trying to preach, he was 
so embarrassed that, he says, any one could have 
killed him with a crab apple! Again and again 
fierce opponents wilted down in debate when they 
saw this calm, serene man in front of them. The 
Cambridge students endeavored to pull him off 
his horse when Fox came to their University town 
with his message, but they could not unhorse 
him. "I kept on my horse's back," he says, 
"and rid through them in the Lord's power. Oh! 
said they, he shines: he glisters." After he had 
spoken in Beverley Minster, a great lady of Bev- 
erley told Justice Hotham of that town that 
"an Angel or Spirit came into the church at Bev- 
erley and spoke the wonderful things of God, to 
the astonishment of all that were there: and when 
it had done, it passed away, and they did not know 
whence it came or whither it went; but it aston- 
ished all, priests, professors and magistrates." 

He wore leather breeches and a leather doublet, 
not in order to be odd and queer, but because 
these were the best and most durable clothes for 
one who traveled in all weathers and had to sleep 
often under hedges and haystacks and needed 
garments that were both stout and warm. His 
clothes were fastened with "alchemy buttons," 
that is, buttons made of composition metal, and 
he was very particular to have good, clean linen. 



32 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

His hair was thick and long, with a strong tend- 
ency to curl at the ends. He wore his hat under 
all circumstances. He could endure fatigue, labor, 
travel, beatings, lack of food, cold, wet, and bar- 
baric prisons. His friends loved him, as William 
Penn says, "with an unfeigned and unfading love." 
A Yorkshire " priest" explained why people fol- 
lowed the new preacher and seemed so attached 
to him by inventing the story that Fox carried 
magic bottles with him and made people drink 
out of them, and that was the reason why he had 
so many followers and friends! 

Soon after he was out of Derby prison he wid- 
ened out his field of labor and entered the great 
county of Yorkshire where he found some of the 
most intimate friends of his life and some of the 
ablest helpers in his work. On the first arrival in 
Yorkshire he did not meet with much kindness 
nor with any success. The first inn at which he 
stayed had no welcome for the "man in leather 
breeches." "I bid the woman of the house," 
he says in the Journal, "if she had any meat, to 
bring me some; but because I said Thee and Thou 
to her she looked strangely on me. Then I asked 
her if she had any milk; and she said, c No/ I was 
sensible she spoke falsely, and being willing to 
try her further, I asked her if she had any cream; 
she denied that she had any. Now there stood a 
churn in the room, and a little boy playing about 



A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED 33 

it put his hands into it and pulled it down, and 
threw all the cream on the floor before my eyes. 
Thus was the woman manifested to be a liar. She 
was amazed and blessed herself, and taking up the 
child whipped it sorely; but I reproved her for her 
lying and deceit. After the Lord had thus dis- 
covered her deceit and perverseness, I walked out 
of the house, and went away until I came to a 
stack of hay and lay in the haystack that night 
in rain and snow [of course without any supper] 
it being three days before the time called Christ- 
mas. " 

The next day he tried to give his message in the 
great Minster at York where the people did not 
take him for an angel, as the great lady had done 
in Beverley. As soon as the words of his brief and 
practical message were out of his mouth, he says, 
"they hurried me out and threw me down the 
steps, but I got up again without hurt and went 
to my lodgings. " 

The first important successes which came to 
him in Yorkshire were in the country about Don- 
caster which is not far from Scrooby, where the 
"Pilgrim Fathers," with their great minister, 
John Robinson, had lived before they went to 
Holland and later to Massachusetts. In this 
region there were many persons who were seeking 
for fresh light, which Robinson had said was about 
to "break forth," and who were prepared in ad- 



34 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

vance for the new preacher. They were all ready 
to become "Children of the Light " as soon as Fox 
appeared. The most important members of this 
group were Richard Farnsworth who became one 
of the leading Quakers; Thomas Aldam and his 
wife Mary; John and Thomas Killam and their 
wives Margaret and Joan. A little later two more 
men joined him who were to be among the most 
famous of all his fellow-workers, and one of them, 
by his sad mistakes, was to bring great trouble 
upon the Quaker movement. They were William 
Dewsbury and James Nayler, both of them former 
soldiers in the armies of the Civil War. Dews- 
bury was one of "the sweetest and wisest' ' of all 
the early Friends, who knew how to turn his 
prisons into palaces and the bolts and bars of his 
dungeon into jewels. Nayler was one of the ablest 
and most moving of all the Quaker preachers, 
and once his preaching gave one of Cromwell's 
officers more terror than did the battle of Dunbar. 
He reached great heights, he had a terrible fall and 
finally he finished his life with a marvelous re- 
pentance. 

At Warmsworth, on this early Yorkshire visit, 
Fox says, " the people ran upon me and knocked 
me sorely with their staves, threw clods and stones 
at me and abused me much; the priest also, being 
in a great rage, laid violent hands on me himself. 
But I warned them and him of the terrible day of 



A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED $$ 

the Lord, and exhorted them to repent and turn 
to Christ. Being filled with the Lord's refreshing 
power, I was not sensible of much hurt I had re- 
ceived by their blows." At Tickhill he was treated 
still worse. As soon as he began to speak in the 
"steeple-house" the people fell upon him fiercely. 
The Journal says: "The clerk took up his Bible, 
as I was speaking and struck me on the face with 
it, so that it gushed out with blood, and I bled 
exceedingly in the steeple-house. Then the people 
cried, 'Let us have him out of the Church/ and 
when they had got me out, they beat me exceed- 
ingly and threw me down, and over a hedge; and 
afterwards they dragged me through a house into 
the street, stoning and beating me as they drew 
me along, so that I was besmeared all over with 
blood and dirt." In the struggle he lost his pre- 
cious hat, which he wore on all occasions and took 
off in the presence of nobody and in no building, 
and he had to walk eight miles to Balby without 
any hat ! 

In a town near Pickering, where there was more 
preaching than practice in the church, and where 
many people came together in large numbers to 
hear the preacher in leather breeches, Fox sat 
for some hours in absolute silence on a haystack, 
with the people gathered around him waiting for 
him to speak. He felt moved "to famish them 
from words" They kept asking him when he was 



$6 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

going to begin. He quietly said each time they 
asked, "Wait." "At last," he says, "I was moved 
of the Lord to speak; and they were struck by the 
Lord's power; the word of life reached to them, 
and there was a general convincement amongst 
them." 

Thus he went on through the towns of York- 
shire, sleeping almost entirely out of doors, so 
that a rumor got afloat that he never used a bed; 
meeting often furious persecution, and, on the 
other hand, gaining bands of followers so devoted 
that they seemed to his enemies under the spell 
of some magic charm. In spite of the bitter op- 
position he was steadily gaining ground and the 
truth was spreading. He says that the Lord told 
him, in these early Yorkshire days, that "if but 
one man or woman were raised up by God's power, 
to stand and live in the same spirit that the 
prophets, and apostles were in, who gave forth 
the Scriptures, that man or woman should shake 
all the country in their profession for ten miles 
around!" which means, I suppose, that a person 
who has real, firsthand religious life and power 
will make everybody in a ten-mile radius see how 
different that is from a religion of mere empty pro- 
fession. 

At length in his travels, with Richard Farns- 
worth as his companion, George Fox came to 
Pendle-Hill, just across the border of Yorkshire, 



A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED 37 

in the edge of Lancashire. He calls it "a very- 
great hill" — "very steep and high," with a wide 
sweep of view, all the way to " the sea bordering 
upon Lancashire." The Lord moved him, he 
says, to climb this Pendle-Hill. And on the lonely 
top of it, with the great stretch of the beautiful 
world below him, he had an inspiration and a 
vision: "From the top of the hill, the Lord let 
me see in what places He had a great people to be 
gathered." 

He had been proclaiming his message in the 
counties of England now for about four years, 
and though he had seen some striking results from 
his labors, the successes were on the whole slender 
and meager. There was little sign yet that a new 
religious reformation was under way or that a 
powerful religious Society was to be born out of 
the movement of which Fox was the leader. There 
were many little temporary sects forming in Eng- 
land at this time and people supposed that "the 
Children of the Light" was to be just one more of 
them. They believed that it would soon go by 
and vanish away. And probably it would have 
done so if Fox, there in the region around Pendle- 
Hill, had not discovered "a great people to be 
gathered." This was a turning point in his life 
and this was the great epoch in his ministry. He 
had hardly eaten anything or drunk anything for 
several days. At a spring on the side of Pendle- 



38 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

Hill he now refreshed himself. That night he came 
to an inn and we hope that, after his long fast, 
he had a good supper. But, whether he had supper 
or not, at the inn he had a new vision, or, at least, 
a continuation of the vision which he had on 
Pendle-Hill. "Here," he says, "the Lord opened 
unto me, and let me see a great people in white 
raiment by a river side, coming to the Lord; and 
the place I saw them in was about Wensleydale 
and Sedbergh." The river of his vision, where the 
people in white raiment were to be gathered, was 
the river Rawthey, which flows through the dales 
near Sedbergh, or Brigflatts. In this district 
there were large communities of people called 
"Seekers." They had separated from the Church, 
somewhat as the "Pilgrim Fathers" at Scrooby 
did, and they had formed a new kind of religious 
meeting. It seemed to them that none of the 
churches in the world were like the Church of 
Christ in the days of the apostles, as it is described 
in the New Testament, and these "Seekers" 
wanted to bring back and restore that apostolic 
Church in its purity. They thought, however, 
that this could not be done until some new prophet 
or apostle should be sent by Christ, commissioned 
to set up the new Church and to bring in the new 
era. While they were waiting for the prophet of 
the Lord to come, they were waiters^ or seekers 
for the Light. They often held their meetings 



A GREAT PEOPLE TO BE GATHERED 39 

in silence for they did not want to speak unless they 
were sure God Himself gave them something to 
say. They had ministers in their communities 
but they did not think that any minister who had 
yet appeared had full authority and power as the 
apostles had. They were "waiting" in hope for 
an apostolic man to come to them. They were all 
ready to believe in him and to receive him as soon 
as they were convinced that he had come. George 
Fox, when he appeared among them, seemed to 
them to be the man they were waiting for, and 
they were quickly "gathered in/' as we shall see. 



CHAPTER V 

THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH 

As we have already seen, "the people in white 
raiment " — which is only another way of saying 
the people who were called to be "saints" — were 
the groups of "seekers" more or less gathered in 
little communities, in the fringe of border towns 
where the three counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire 
and Westmoreland join. Sedbergh was the im- 
portant center in Yorkshire; Yealand and Kellet 
in Lancashire; Kendal, Underbarrow and Gray- 
rigg in Westmoreland, while Firbank chapel at 
Preston-Patrick, not far from Kendal, was their 
central meeting place for their General Meeting, 
held once a month. As soon as they heard Fox 
speak his message, they felt that he "spoke with 
authority" and was a different type of preacher 
from any they had ever heard. 

The first great occasion when the "Seekers" in 
a body heard Fox speak was the Sunday afternoon 
following his "vision" on Pendle-Hill. It was the 
time of their General Monthly Meeting at Preston- 
Patrick. Francis Howgill and John Audland, two 
of their foremost men, had spoken in Firbank 
chapel in the morning and Fox had looked in at 

40 



THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH 4I 

the door while Howgill was speaking, but he did 
not go into the chapel. He waited outside and 
at the close of the morning meeting he asked the 
throng of people to come to an afternoon meeting 
on the hillside. A mass of rock rises out of the 
fell which makes a natural pulpit, with a broad 
area in front admirably suited for a large group 
of listeners. Here in the afternoon a thousand 
people gathered around the rock on which Fox 
sat. At first there was a period of deep, intense 
silence and then the strange, new, prophet-like 
preacher rose and spoke for three hours! He told 
them in powerful, piercing words how different the 
Church in the apostles' days was from the Church 
in their time and he declared that Christ wanted 
to restore this true, living, powerful, spiritual 
Church. He announced, as he always did, that 
Christ Himself was still living, though invisible, 
and would be the Teacher of all who were, willing 
and eager to hear His voice. The living Christ 
would feed them and guide them and reveal the 
truth to them and make their bodies real Temples 
of God. He made them see that they need no 
longer be "waiters" and "seekers," for the time 
had fully come when they could be finders and 
possessors. The Light of Christ, he told them, 
reaches every soul and the real presence of Christ 
spreads over every human heart. As they listened, 
with rapt faces, they felt the demonstration and 



42 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

power of his message. It reached their hearts and 
they were convinced of its truth. It seemed clear 
that the person possessed of true apostolic power, 
for whom they had been waiting, was now among 
them, speaking to them. Many hundreds were 
convinced and all those who had been "teachers" 
in the Seekers' communities accepted the message 
of Fox and joined themselves to his movement. 
Many more meetings were held among the Seekers 
and many families were visited, until practically 
all who had formed the groups of Seekers now 
became "Children of the Light" and helped to 
form what now came to be called the Society of 
Friends. 

From these new bands came the most important 
of the early Quaker preachers and leaders. We 
have already met Francis Howgill and John Aud- 
land who were "teachers" in the meeting at Fir- 
bank chapel. Howgill was a little older and 
Audland a little younger than Fox. They soon 
caught the same spirit and became powerful 
bearers of the message about the living Christ in 
man's soul. No less remarkable were two other 
publishers of the Quaker truth who came to help 
Fox at this time — Edward Burrough and John 
Camm. Burrough was only nineteen and his life- 
work was to be brief, but his whole strength was 
"bended after God 3 " and prisons could not daunt 
him nor death affright him. He was a great in- 



THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH 43 

strument in the spreading of the Quaker message. 
Camm was already fifty and was one of the few 
Quaker messengers of this early time who were not 
in the first flush of youth and vigor. His soul 
had "hungered and thirsted for truth," and now 
that he felt sure of having found it, he devoted 
himself through suffering and sacrifice, to the 
spreading of it. There were many besides these 
four full-statured preachers who possessed large 
gifts and who became powerful ministers with Fox 
in the publishing of the Quaker teaching of the 
Light. The most noted of them were Richard 
Hubberthorne, Miles Halhead, Miles Hubbersty, 
Robert Widders, Gervase Benson, Thomas Tay- 
lor, Ann Camm, Dorothy Waugh and Elizabeth 
Fletcher. They were devoted to their new leader, 
George Fox; they were, like him, ready to leave 
all, houses and lands, father and mother, friends 
and neighbors, to go out into " the hard and briery 
world" with their gospel of joy, to suffer or to die 
for their truth, and like "the little brothers" who 
gathered around St Francis of Assisi, they felt 
that through their new leader, they had found 
Christ and His joy. William Caton, who joined 
the band from the Swarthmore group, of which 
we shall soon hear, expressed the joy and thrill 
which they all felt. He says: "Oh, the love which 
in that day abounded in us, . . . and oh, the 
freshness of the power of the Lord God which was 



44 TH E STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

amongst us, and the zeal for God and His truth, 
the comfort and refreshment which we had from 
His presence, the nearness and dearness that was 
amongst us one towards another." In a very- 
short time there were no less than sixty persons 
who, thrilled with new life and power, were going 
about, as George Fox was doing, to preach and 
proclaim the Light and Life and Love of God 
revealed to men. 

But there was a still more important person in 
this beautiful Lake District of Westmoreland who 
was waiting unconsciously, like the Seekers, for 
Fox's vital message. This was Margaret Fell of 
Swarthmore Hall who was one day to become 
Margaret Fox. Her maiden name was Askew and 
she came of the wealthy family at Marsh Grange 
in the Furness District. Some historians have 
thought that she was a descendant of the noble 
martyr, Anne Askew, but that is not likely. She 
must live by her own fame and not by that of a 
martyred ancestor. In 1658, when Margaret was 
about eighteen, she had married Thomas Fell, the 
proprietor of Swarthmore Hall, a fine old Eliza- 
bethan manor house, near the town of Ulverston. 
He was sixteen years older than his lovely wife, 
and before the arrival of Fox he had become one 
of the leading men in the northern counties of 
England. He had been a member of the Long 
Parliament, and he was now a prominent judge and 



THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH 45 

the holder of other honorable and distinguished 
positions. His work as judge took him often away 
from home and his capable wife had become effi- 
cient in the management of the affairs of the Hall 
and of the large estate. Nine children, all but 
one of whom were still living, seven of them daugh- 
ters, had been born in Swarthmore Hall during 
the happy years of their married life. 

Margaret Fell was a devoutly religious woman. 
She was a diligent attender of the Ulverston church, 
where "priest Lampitt" ministered, but she was 
not wholly satisfied with the religion of the 
churches and longed for a more real and intimate 
experience of God. She felt and thought in the 
secret of her heart much as "the people in white 
raiment" did, though she had never joined the 
Seeker communities. The Hall was always hos- 
pitably open to religious people and the mistress 
of it welcomed all traveling ministers who came 
that way. It was, therefore, not an unusual cir- 
cumstance when a friend of the Fells brought 
"the man in leather breeches" to spend the night 
in Swarthmore Hall. Judge Fell was absent on 
his circuit and his wife, too, was away from home 
when Fox arrived, but Lampitt, the Ulverston 
minister, came to the Hall on the afternoon of 
his arrival and had a long talk and discussion with 
him. Fox at once took a positive dislike to Lam- 
pitt, for he had a clear sense that the Ulverston 



4.6 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

minister was impure in his life and insincere, preach- 
ing lofty things to others but living himself in sin, 
and when Margaret Fell returned in the evening 
she found that her guest, whose name she had 
only recently heard, had had a vigorous discussion 
and a sharp disagreement with her minister. 

The next day was "lecture day " in the Ulverston 
church and Fox was invited to hear "priest Lam- 
pitt" preach, but he chose instead to "walk in 
the fields," where he always seems to have felt 
especially near to God. He had not walked long 
in the fields, however, before "the word of the 
Lord came to him" to go to the church. They 
were singing a hymn as he came in, and, when the 
hymn was finished, Fox asked permission to speak. 
As Margaret Fell has given a vivid account of 
what happened in the church we will let her tell 
it: "When they had done singing, he stood up 
upon a seat or form, and desired that he might 
have liberty to speak, and he that was in the 
pulpit said he might. And the first words that 
he spoke were as followeth, 'He is not a Jew that 
is one outward, neither is that circumcision, which 
is outward; but he is a Jew that is one inward, and 
that is circumcision, which is of the heart/ And 
so he went on, and said how that Christ was the 
Light of the world, and lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world, and that by this Light they 
might be gathered to God. And I stood up in my 



THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH 47 

pew, and I wondered at his doctrine, for I had never 
heard such before. And then he went on and 
opened up the Scriptures, and said that the Scrip- 
tures were the prophets' words and Christ's and 
the apostles' words; what they spoke they en- 
joyed and possessed and had it from the Lord. 
And [he] said, 'Then what had any to do with the 
Scriptures, but as they came to the Spirit that 
gave them forth? You will say, Christ saith this, 
and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say? 
Art thou a Child of the Light, and hast thou 
walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it 
inwardly from the Lord? This opened me so, that 
it cut me to the heart, and then I saw clearly 
that we were all wrong. So I sat down in my pew 
again, and cried bitterly: and I cried in my spirit 
to the Lord, ' We are all thieves, we are all thieves, 
we have taken the Scriptures in words and know 
nothing of them in ourselves. 

As Fox went on to describe the present condition 
of the Church and was pointing out how different 
it was from the Church in the days of the apostles, 
a justice of the peace, named John Sawrey, a 
staunch Puritan, whom Margaret Fell calls a 
"professor," interrupted him and told the church- 
warden to take him out of the church. The church- 
warden was trying to perform his disagreeable 
task when suddenly Margaret Fell rose up again 
in her pew and called out in a tone of authority, 



48 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

"Let him alone, why may not he speak as well as 
any other?" Whereupon the churchwarden let 
Fox alone and Mistress Fell took him back to 
Swarthmore Hall in peace. That night he spoke 
with penetrating power to the family and servants 
in the Hall and they were convinced that what he 
said was true. Fox visited many neighboring 
places, everywhere gathering more followers. In 
the meantime James Nayler and Richard Farns- 
worth had come to Westmoreland to join him and 
they, too, helped to establish the Swarthmore 
Hall group in their new-found faith. The ministers 
of the surrounding churches and the men of the 
strong Puritan stamp like Justice Sawrey were 
much aroused at the progress which George Fox 
was making in their district and they resolved to 
set powerful Judge Fell against him. A large 
party of them, with captains and magistrates, 
went to meet the judge as he was returning from 
his circuit, three weeks after the arrival of Fox, 
and poured their tale of woe into his ears: "A 
fanatic, ranting preacher in leather breeches, 
named George Fox, had come to Swarthmore Hall 
and had bewitched his wife, and had bewitched 
his entire household. This vagrant preacher had 
taken away their religion and had turned them 
into mad Quakers. He was destroying the churches 
and spreading his wild ideas in every direction 
and he and his Quakers must be thrust out of the 



THE NEW GROUP OF FRIENDS IN THE NORTH 49 

district, or clapt into a dungeon at once or there 
would be a complete havoc of everything they 
loved in the country." Judge Fell was a man of 
strong nature and powerful will, and, as he heard 
this story of bewitchment, his wrath was kindled 
and he came riding to his greatly altered home in 
profound grief and anger. Nobody could foresee 
what would happen next. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA 

Angry as he was at what was taking place in 
his home, Judge Fell was nevertheless a calm and 
sensible man. He knew and trusted his wife. 
He would not condemn her until he had heard her 
story. He was "greatly offended/' but he did not 
lose his head. As Margaret Fell says, "he be- 
haved moderately and wisely." She herself was 
in a desperate strait, for she felt sure that she must 
either displease her husband or disobey God and 
the truth. The judge was stern and quiet, and 
everybody could see in his hard and silent face 
that he did not like what had happened in his 
absence. James Nayler and Richard Farnsworth 
were in the Hall at the time and Mistress Fell 
asked them during the afternoon to come in and 
explain to her husband why they had come and 
what their religious faith was. Like the real man 
he was, Judge Fell listened quietly to them and 
seemed to understand their spirit. George Fox 
was expected that evening and everything would 
depend on the impression which he would make 
upon the judge. At evening dinner Margaret 
Fell began suddenly to quake and tremble, as the 

50 



THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA 5 1 

early Quakers sometimes did in their meetings, 
and the judge was "struck with amazement/' 
as he beheld her, "and knew not what to think, 
but was quiet and still." The children, too, were 
all altered in manner and behavior. They were 
all "quiet and still and grown sober, and could 
not play on their music." The poor judge hardly 
knew his own home, and he sat and wondered. 

A little later George himself arrived. Mistress 
Fell came quietly to the parlor where the per- 
plexed judge was sitting alone and asked if George 
Fox might come in and talk with him. Judge 
Fell said, " Yes." George came in with his hat on 
his head and without paying any of the customary 
compliments. He spoke almost at once of his 
mission in the world and told the judge simply 
and plainly the message which he preached every- 
where. As he went on talking the family and 
servants gathered into the parlor; James Nayler 
and Richard Farnsworth came in and George 
preached on, "very excellently," Margaret Fell's 
account says, "as ever I heard him." "He opened 
Christ's and the apostles' practices which they 
were in, in their day. And he opened the night 
of apostasy, since the apostles' days, and laid 
open the priests and their practices in the apos- 
tasy; and if all England had been there, I thought 
they could not have denied the truth of those 
things." 



$2 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

It was a great crisis in Fox's life and very much 
depended on the decision which the prominent 
judge before him should give. He was used to 
hearing important cases and of going straight to 
the central point. So now he did not allow the 
stories he had heard to influence him. He made 
nothing of the lack of formal compliments. He 
calmly weighed the words of the man speaking 
in his parlor and he believed that they were true. 
He said little. He went to bed "very quiet," but 
"he clearly saw the truth." The next morning 
"priest Lampitt" came and started a counter- 
offensive. But it was no use; it was too late. 
"My husband," Margaret says, "had seen so 
much the night before that the priest got little 
entrance upon him." 

A little later, Judge Fell of his own accord 
offered the use of the Hall as a meeting place for 
Friends and, though he himself never joined them, 
he appreciated their message, he showed them 
much kindness, he opposed those who persecuted 
them and he would often sit quietly in his own 
room, adjoining the large meeting room of the 
Hall, with his door ajar, and listen to the Quaker 
preaching. And so until his death, a few years 
later, the old judge and Parliamentarian gave the 
new movement his respect and blessing, though 
he felt himself too old to change his ways and 
religious habits; and he let his wife and daughters 



THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA $3 

have full liberty to worship God as their hearts 
prompted them. 

While the cause of Fox was gaining this power- 
ful support and he was adding so many important 
persons to his new-born Society, his opponents 
were more than ever resolved to crush him and 
stop his influence. Justice Sawrey, "the first 
stirrer up of cruel persecution in the North/' was 
the leader of the opposition forces in Westmore- 
land and he and others inflamed the mob-element 
to make Fox's work in that district henceforth 
impossible. The first collision of forces came at 
Ulverston, where Fox, with the word of God in 
his soul, "like a fire and a hammer/' tried to preach 
again on a "lecture-day." Justice Sawrey roused 
the people to a furious rage and set them on the 
preacher. Fox says, "They fell on me in the 
steeple-house; knocked me down, kicked me and 
trampled upon me." After much uproar and con- 
flict between those who opposed Fox and those 
who sympathized with him, he was dragged to 
"the common moss-side" and there beaten with 
staves and hedge-stakes, and with holm or holly- 
bushes until, unconscious, he fell down upon the 
wet common. "When I recovered," the Journal 
says, " and saw myself lying in a watery common, 
and the people standing about me, I lay still a 
little while; and the power of the Lord sprang 
through me, and the Eternal Refreshings refreshed 



54 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

me, so that I stood up again in the strengthening 
power of the Eternal God; and stretching out my 
arms amongst them I said with a loud voice, 
' Strike again; here are my arms, my head and my 
cheeks.'" 

"There was in the company," the graphic ac- 
count continues, "a mason, a professor, but a rude 
fellow; he with his walking rule-staff gave me a 
blow with all his might, just over the back of my 
hand, as it was stretched out; with which blow my 
hand was so bruised and my arm so benumbed, 
that I could not draw it unto me again; so that 
some of the people cried out, c he hath spoiled his 
hand for ever having the use of it any more/ 
But I looked at it in the love of God (for I was in 
the love of God to them all, that had persecuted 
me) and after a while the Lord's power sprang 
through me again and through my hand and arm, 
so that in a moment I recovered strength in my 
hand and arm, in the sight of them all." 

Thereupon the unconquered and fearless man 
was "moved of the Lord" to go back to Ulverston 
and walk through the market-place where many 
people were gathered. As he was going through 
the market-place a soldier, belted and armed, met 
him and said with admiration: "Sir, I see you are 
a man, and I am ashamed and grieved that you 
should be so abused. If I can do anything to 
assist you, let me know," Fox quietly told his 



THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA 55 

unknown soldier-friend that "the Lord's power 
was over all/' and that he needed no sword. 
That night when Fox got back to Swarthmore 
Hall his body and arms were "yellow, black and 
blue, with blows and bruises/' but his spirit was 
triumphant. 

A still more fierce and brutal assault was made 
upon him two weeks later at Walney, a little is- 
land which skirts the western coast of Furness. 
He went to Walney with James Nayler and had a 
meeting in the town of Cockan on the island. A 
man came into the meeting with a cocked pistol 
and asked for George Fox. The people ran away 
in great fear, but Fox stepped up to the man with- 
out fear of the pistol. The man aimed the pistol 
at Fox and snapped the trigger, but the pistol 
"would not go off." The people tried to seize 
the man, to prevent him from doing mischief, but 
Fox was "moved in the Lord's power" to speak 
to him, which struck such a fear into his soul that 
he trembled and went and hid himself away. 

But the next morning, in another part of the 
island, a mob of forty men "with staves, clubs 
and fishing poles" fell upon Fox, beating him 
and pushing him toward the sea, aiming appar- 
ently to drown him, which they almost did. It 
seems that the people all believed that Fox had 
"bewitched" James Lancaster, one of their towns- 
men who was "convinced" by Fox's preaching 



56 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

and had become a Quaker. Full of rage and led 
on by Lancaster's wife, they rushed at the gentle 
Fox, knocked him down, stunned him and rained 
volleys of stones upon him. When he came back 
to consciousness, he saw James Lancaster shielding 
him with his own body while Lancaster's wife was 
trying to dash stones at his face. Lancaster suc- 
ceeded in getting his wounded friend into a boat 
and so rescuing him from the frantic mob which 
stoned the boat until it was out beyond their 
range. Meantime they discovered James Nayler 
who was left behind and they fell upon him, crying, 
"Kill him, kill him." Nayler also had a narrow 
escape, but eventually managed to get off with 
only heavy bruises. When Fox and Lancaster 
landed from their boat across the channel on the 
mainland, another crowd came at them with 
"pitchforks, flails and staves," crying, "Kill him, 
knock him on the head, bring the cart and carry 
him away to the church yard." He fortunately 
got away from the rabble alive, though covered 
with bruises and besmeared all over with miry 
dirt, and so sore that the next day he was unable 
to ride on the horse which Margaret Fell, hearing 
of his experience, sent to fetch him back to Swarth- 
more Hall. 

Not having killed him by mob violence and 
not being able by persecution to stop the impetus 
of his movement, his opponents now tried to get 



THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA 57 

him imprisoned on the charge that he had claimed 
to be divine and equal with God! A court warrant 
was issued against him, while Judge Fell was 
absent on business, but when Judge Fell returned 
the officials were afraid to carry it out and so did 
not "serve it" on Fox. He, however, rode to the 
city of Lancaster at the time of the court sessions 
to defend himself. Judge Fell, loyal to his guest, 
went with him, and stood by him, like the brave 
man he was. Fox not only cleared himself of the 
charges in the unserved warrant, but he was given 
a public opportunity in the court room to declare 
his message, which he did in such a way that many 
prominent persons in Lancaster were convinced by 
it. This affair at the sessions called forth a famous 
little book from Fox's pen — one of the first of 
many such — which he called, "Saul's Errand to 
Damascus, with His Packet of Letters from the 
High Priest against the Disciples of the Lord." 
Another attempt was made at the January session 
of the court in Lancaster to try Fox, on a similar 
charge, but Colonel West, the clerk of the assize, re- 
fused to issue the warrant and told the judge that he 
was ready to offer up his estate and even his body 
for Fox, whom he believed to be innocent. Fox, 
hearing that he might be summoned, went straight 
to Lancaster to confront his adversaries, but "the 
Lord's power was over all and gave dominion." 
For many weeks following, during the spring 



58 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

of 1653, with his headquarters at Swarthmore Hall, 
he labored in Westmoreland, Cumberland, Lan- 
cashire and the western part of Yorkshire, with 
the usual experiences of success and fierce persecu- 
tion. Sitting one day in April at Swarthmore 
Hall, when Judge Fell and Justice Gervase Benson 
were discussing the news and talking of events 
in Parliament, of which Judge Fell was probably- 
still a member, Fox was suddenly "moved to tell 
them that before that day two weeks the Parlia- 
ment should be broken up and the speaker plucked 
out of his chair." Two weeks passed, and Justice 
Benson once more visited Swarthmore, this time 
with the news that Oliver Cromwell had expelled 
the "Rump," as it was called, of the Long Parlia- 
ment, and had "plucked the speaker out of his 
chair." "George, I see," he told Judge Fell, "is 
a true prophet." 

It was not, however, because he foresaw an 
occasional event that George Fox was a "prophet"; 
it was rather because he saw, more clearly than 
most did, the truth about man's soul and the real, 
spiritual nature of religion, and because he was 
able, through sacrifice and suffering, to make 
others see. "To receive and go with a message 
and to have a word from the Lord, as the prophets 
and apostles had and did, and as I had done" he 
told the priests who came to discuss with him at 
Swarthmore, was the real mark of living religion. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MEETING WITH OLIVER CROMWELL 

In midsummer of 1653, George Fox came to 
Carlisle. He had his first meeting here in the 
Abbey with Baptists and soldiers, many of whom 
were " convinced/' Then he went to the Castle 
and preached to the garrison, telling the soldiers 
that Christ within them would be their teacher 
and their guide, if they would watch for the divine 
Light and obey it, when it revealed itself to them. 
He went also to the market place and warned all 
who were selling merchandise against cheating and 
against all forms of unfair or dishonest dealing. 
While he was speaking a man cried out against him 
and Fox "set his eyes upon him and spoke to him 
in the power of the Lord," whereupon the man, 
who could not stand the gaze, cried: " Do not pierce 
me so with thy eyes; keep thy eyes off me." 

Finally Fox went on Sunday morning to the 
cathedral and, "after the priest had done," 
"preached the truth to the people and declared 
the word of life amongst them." The Journal 
says that the power of the Lord was so dreadful 
among them that the people trembled and shook, 
and many thought that the "steeple-house" shook! 

S9 



60 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

A party of the people, led on by the magistrates* 
wives, rose up in rage against him, but the soldiers 
sided with him and rallied around him. In the midst 
of the tumult a file of soldiers, at the governor's 
order, came down from the garrison and arrested 
him, though the soldiers who had heard him re- 
mained very friendly and sympathetic. He was 
committed to prison on the charge of being "a 
blasphemer, a heretic and a seducer !" 

As Fox had been in prison once before at Derby 
on the charge of blasphemy there was grave danger 
that he would now be hanged, if he were found 
guilty by the court a second time. He was abomin- 
ably treated in the prison, put into the worst 
dungeon "with moss-troopers [cut- throats] thieves 
and murderers/' in a place full of insects and 
not fit for cattle to live in. Beside this vile treat- 
ment, he was frequently cudgeled by the brutal 
jailer, who "beat Friends as if he had been beating 
a pack of wool." When the prisoner went to the 
grate to get his food, the jailer would beat him 
off "with a great staff." On one occasion, when 
the jailer was fiercely beating him with his cudgel, 
Fox began to "sing in the Lord's power." The 
jailer went away and got a fiddler and brought 
him into the dungeon and set him playing. Fox 
was "moved in the everlasting power of the Lord 
God to sing," and, he adds, "my voice drowned 
them and struck them and confounded them." 



THE MEETING WITH OLIVER CROMWELL 6 1 

Some of his powerful, influential friends, notably 
Anthony Pearson and Gervase Benson, wrote 
vigorous letters to the Carlisle authorities in his 
behalf and parliamentary influence from London 
was exercised in his favor, so that after an impris- 
onment of seven weeks Fox was released without 
undergoing a trial. 

While he was in the Carlisle prison a young lad 
of sixteen, named James Parnell, walked a hun- 
dred and fifty miles to have an interview with the 
famous Quaker. He was " convinced" and be- 
came one of the most wonderful and effective of 
all the young preachers of the Light. He became 
a gentle saint, like St. Francis, and when in Col- 
chester, where he labored as the first Quaker 
apostle in that district, a brutal man struck him 
with a great staff and said "Take that for Jesus 
Christ's sake," the young lad answered, "Friend, 
I do receive it for Jesus Christ's sake." Here in a 
terrible hole in Colchester Castle "Little James" 
met his death, after valiant work for Christ, and 
so became the first Quaker martyr. 

Meantime the Quaker cause was powerfully 
advancing. New districts were constantly being 
visited by the bands of workers, new preachers 
were being won for the work and the first simple 
stage of organization was now begun. Of all the 
efforts to tell England about the Quaker message 
none were more remarkable than those which 



62 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

were made in London and Bristol. The two mes- 
sengers who came to London to tell the people of 
that city about the Light of Christ in the lives 
of men were Francis Howgill and Edward Bur- 
rough, who, as we have seen, had once been 
"Seekers." They were young men, full of life and 
enthusiasm and powerful preachers. They at once 
produced a profound impression. Howgill wrote 
joyously, "By the arm of the Lord all falls be- 
fore us." "Astonishment took hold" upon the 
people and multitudes were convinced. It was 
without doubt a new kind of preaching and it 
reached the hearts of men and women as nothing 
had done for generations before. No less extraor- 
dinary was the effect of the preaching of Audland 
and Camm in Bristol. They discovered in and 
around the city communities of Seekers like those 
in the northern counties and here, again, these 
waiting people came over in multitudes to join 
those who believed that they were happy finders. 
Sometimes more than 3000 people came to their 
meetings and they write with enthusiasm that 
their "net is likely to break with fishes." 

George Fox, too, was having vast throngs at 
meetings in the north. Many thousands the 
Journal says, were at "a mighty meeting" at 
Synderhill Green, near Halifax, and "the Lord's 
power and truth was over all." Great meetings 
were later held in Lincolnshire and in many other 



THE MEETING WITH OLIVER CROMWELL 6$ 

counties, as Fox traveled south. He came, in his 
journeyings, to his old home at Fenny Drayton 
which he had not visited for three years. Here 
he had long and vigorous discussions with "priest 
Stephens" and with eight other clergymen who 
came to his help. "The Lord's power came over 
all" and his "truth confounded them." George's 
father, good old "Righteous Christer," though he 
still attended the church and had not been com- 
pletely "convinced," listened with keen apprecia- 
tion to his son's words and struck his cane on the 
ground and said, "Truly, I see, he that will stand 
to the truth, it will carry him out [triumphantly]." 
Even "priest Stephens" said, "What might George 
not have been, if it had not been for the Quakers!" 
After many experiences in his home neighbor- 
hood Fox went on with his travels, until he came 
to Whetstone in the same county as Drayton, i. e., 
Leicestershire, where he planned to hold a meeting 
with Friends who were coming in from the sur- 
rounding district. A band of soldiers from Col- 
onel Hacker's regiment came to this meeting, 
evidently suspecting there was some plot brewing 
against Oliver Cromwell. The troopers stopped 
the meeting and took George Fox, with one of his 
companions, to Colonel Hacker. Hacker seems to 
have been convinced that Fox and his friends were 
plotting to overthrow the government and pos- 
sibly intended to restore the Stuarts! He en- 



64 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

deavored to make the Quaker traveler promise 
not to hold any more meetings, but quite naturally 
he failed to get such a promise! Whereupon he 
decided to send Fox to London to be dealt with 
by Oliver Cromwell himself. Before sending him 
to London, the Colonel made one more effort to 
induce his prisoner to give the desired promise. 
He had Fox brought to his bedroom in the early 
morning and asked him if he would promise. 
George replied, "I shall go to meetings whenever 
the Lord orders me to go." "Well, then," said 
Colonel Hacker, "you must go to the Protector." 
Fox, thereupon, kneeled by his bedside and asked 
the Lord to forgive him. "And when the day 
of thy misery and trial comes upon thee," Fox 
said to him, "I bid thee remember what I had 
said to thee now." When Colonel Hacker was 
about to be executed a few years later he did 
"remember." 

Captain Drury, who was given charge of taking 
Fox to Cromwell, kept asking him on their journey 
up to London, if he was not ready now to " promise " 
not to hold meetings and so have his liberty. 
The captain got no results. As they put up at 
inns on the way Fox was "moved of the Lord to 
warn the people that the day of the Lord was 
coming." And so the strange procession went on 
until they came to London and Captain Drury 
lodged his prisoner in the "Mermaid Inn," and 



THE MEETING WITH OLIVER CROMWELL 6$ 

went to make his report to the Protector. Crom- 
well requested that Fox sign a document promis- 
ing not to take up arms against the government! 
The Quaker prisoner then wrote a letter to tell 
Oliver Cromwell that God had sent him (George 
Fox) to turn people from darkness to light, not to 
bear arms against anybody; to be a witness against 
evil and hate and violence, to bring men away 
from swords and guns and killing and to lead 
them to a kind of life which would make war 
impossible. It gradually dawned upon the mind 
of the captain that his prisoner was not very 
dangerous after all and finally he took him in an 
informal way to Whitehall to see the Protector. 

It was in the early morning and Cromwell was 
in the process of being dressed by his valet when 
Fox was ushered in to his presence. The meeting 
was in the famous Whitehall palace. "Peace be 
to this house/' was the salutation with which 
George Fox entered the Protector's bedroom. 
Here they were face to face, two of the most 
remarkable and two of the most typical men of 
the seventeenth century in England. They were 
very unlike and yet they had much in common. 
They were both the product of great spiritual 
forces and religious movements and both were try- 
ing, each in his own way, to free England from 
the tyranny of the past. Both feared God and 
nothing else in the world, and both were sincere 



66 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

men, who meant to be true to the light which 
they had to live by. What a scene it was for some 
great painter to portray. Throughout the entire 
interview George Fox wore his hat, and Cromwell, 
before whom everybody else uncovered and bowed 
or kneeled, was not the least offended, but under- 
stood by a kind of fine instinct that his visitor 
meant him no disrespect. The two brave men 
talked together much about truth and much 
about religion, and they seem to have understood 
one another fairly well and to have had consider- 
able agreement in their talk. Fox says that Oliver 
"carried himself very moderately." Oliver told 
George that he quarreled too much with the min- 
isters. It was a good point to make and there was 
some real truth in it. Fox claimed that it was the 
ministers who began the quarrel, that they were 
forever attacking him, though he admitted that 
he often charged the ministers with preaching for 
money, with being covetous and greedy, and with 
always having their eyes on the main chance for 
their own advancement. Several times Oliver 
declared "that is so," "that is true," "that is a 
fact." Fox pointed out in his usual way that it 
was not enough to read the Scriptures and to 
claim to believe them; that to be a true Christian 
one must have the Spirit and life and power of the 
apostles and prophets who wrote the Scriptures, 
and not merely to have their books, and Oliver 



THE MEETING WITH OLIVER CROMWELL 67 

apparently thought so too. He caught George by 
the hand, his eyes filled with tears, and he said, 
"Come again to my house, for if thou and I were 
but an hour a day together, we should be nearer one 
to the other." The great man looked up kindly 
and added, I wish no more ill to thee than I do 
to my own soul." To which George replied, "If 
thou didst wish ill to me thou wouldst wrong thy 
own soul." 

When it was time to go Fox, like an ancient 
prophet, bid the Lord Protector hearken to God's 
voice, keep in the fear of God, that he might stand 
and live and act in God's counsel and guidance. 
"If thou wilt do that," he said, "God will keep 
thee tender and free from hardness of heart. But 
if thou shalt not hear God's voice, thy heart will 
become hardened." "That is so," Cromwell con- 
fessed, and the two men parted. 

The Protector at once saw, with his keen eye 
which looked through men, that this man was no 
plotter, no dangerous insurrectionist. He sent 
out word by Captain Drury, before Fox had left 
the place, that he was at full liberty and might 
go whither he would. We can almost hear his 
visitor calmly say, "How otherwise." By Crom- 
well's order Fox was then brought into the great 
hall where the gentlemen of the Protector's court 
gathered to dine. It soon began to dawn upon 
the mind of Fox that he was being taken to a 



68 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

banquet in the hall of the palace instead of to a 
prison and immediately he declined to accept 
the favor. He sent a message back to the Lord 
Protector that he could not eat his food nor par- 
take of his drink. When this message reached 
Cromwell he said: "Now I see that there is a people 
risen up that I cannot win with gifts, honors, 
offices or places; but all other sects and people 
I can." Fox returned to the "Mermaid" a free 
man and paid for his own breakfast. 

This unexpected visit to London gave the 
Quaker apostle a fine opportunity to proclaim his 
message in the great metropolis, which he at once 
proceeded to do with power and success. He had 
many "great and powerful meetings" in the city 
and a vast number of people were "convinced" 
who swelled the rapidly growing new Society. 
He was "moved" also "to declare the day of the 
Lord" to the people in Whitehall palace and 
" there was a great convincement in the Protector's 
house and family," though he did not this time 
see the stern old warrior who had become the 
head of the nation. 



CHAPTER VIII 

in England's worst prison 

After the interview with Cromwell and the 
"powerful meetings" in London, Fox started off 
again upon his almost incessant travels. Probably 
no man in the seventeenth century knew all of 
England as intimately as he did. He visited not 
only the great cities, but the small towns, villages 
and hamlets as well. On horseback or on foot 
he traveled both the great roads and the country 
lanes. He met and talked with all types of people 
and he saw all sides of life. 

Leaving London he went first to "a great 
meeting'' at Luton in Bedfordshire. He declared 
"God's eternal truth" and "people generally 
were convinced." He soon returned to London, 
"where Friends were finely established in the 
truth," and then he took a journey through the 
towns and villages of Kent. In his wide journey- 
ings he went to Colchester and had a brief farewell 
visit with James Parnell a short time before that 
brave young martyr's life was ended. It was at 
this period — sometime in the autumn of 1655 — 
that he rode through the crowd of Cambridge 
students who could not unhorse him and who 

69 



70 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

wondered at the shine on his face! Not long 
after this, when he was riding with some of his 
companions through the famous town of Warwick, 
the "rude people" gathered with stones and 
sticks to give them a rough passage through the 
streets. The Journal tells the story well: "One 
of them took hold of my horse J s bridle and broke 
it; but the horse drawing back threw him under 
him. Though the bailiff saw this, yet he did not 
stop, nor so much as rebuke, the rude multitude, 
so that it was much we were not slain or hurt 
in the streets; for the people threw stones and 
struck at us, as we rode along the town. When 
we were quite out of the town, I told Friends 
it was upon me from the Lord that I must go back 
into the town again." "So," the account goes on, 
"I passed through the market in the dreadful 
power of God, declaring the word of life to them, 
and John Crook [one of his companions] followed 
me. Some struck at me; but the Lord's power 
was over them and gave me dominion over all." 

In the inn at Baldock, one of the many places 
visited on this tour of counties, "two desperate 
fellows" fell to fighting furiously, so that "none 
durst come nigh to part them." "But I was 
moved in the Lord's power," Fox says, "to go to 
them; and when I had loosed their hands, I held 
one of them by one hand and the other by the other, 
showed them the evil of their doings and reconciled 



IN ENGLAND S WORST PRISON 71 

them one to the other and they were so loving and 
thankful to me that people admired it!" 

After a short visit again to London, where he 
saw James Nayler and had a foresight that some 
sad trouble was coming to him — "a fear struck 
me concerning him" — Fox started off on a great 
spiritual campaign through the western counties 
of England. Edward Pyott, a former captain, 
and William Salt of London were his companions 
in travel. It proved to be hard and barren country 
for Fox's spiritual message. The people were 
light and flippant. They were not prepared by 
long spiritual training for the new teaching, as 
the people in the North had been. The travelers 
found few "sober" or "tender" people who were 
ready to be "convinced." At Kingsbridge, in 
the inn, they found many people drinking and 
Fox was "moved of the Lord to go in amongst 
them, and direct them to the light which Christ, 
the heavenly Man, had enlightened them with: 
by which they might see all their evil ways, words 
and deeds, and by the same light they might also 
see Jesus their Saviour. The innkeeper stood 
uneasy, seeing that the speaking hindered his 
guests from drinking; and as soon as the last 
words were out of my mouth, he snatched up the 
candle and said, c Come, here is a light for you 
to go to your chamber/ Next morning, when 
he was cool I represented to him what an uncivil 



72 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

thing it was for him to do so, then warning him 
of the day of the Lord, we got ready and passed 
away. " At Plymouth the cause prospered better 
and they had a "precious meeting." "The Lord's 
power came over the people" here. Many were 
"convinced/' among them Lady Elizabeth Tre- 
lawny, daughter of a baronet, and a "fine meeting 
was settled there in the Lord's power." 

Trouble awaited the little party in Cornwall. 
The magistrates were resolved to have no Quakers 
in their district. At Marazion, which Fox calls 
"Market-Jew," the constables summoned Fox 
and Pyott to appear before the mayor and alder- 
men of the town. They had no warrant to make 
the arrest with, and when Fox asked to see the 
warrant, one of the constables pulled out his mace 
from under his cloak and said that was his warrant. 
Fox, as usual, took the opportunity of delivering 
his message to the mayor and other officials who 
seem to have been impressed and were ready to 
let the little party go on unmolested. But un- 
fortunately they were met about three miles from 
the town by an officer belonging to the staff of 
Major Ceely who was stationed at St. Ives. The 
officer took to the major a copy of a paper which 
Fox had written and distributed telling about the 
light within. This paper aroused Major Ceely 
and the people of the town and while the little 
party was waiting to have a horse shod, and while 



IN ENGLAND S WORST PRISON 73 

Fox, meantime, had gone a little way off to look 
at Bristol Channel, Pyott and Salt were dragged 
away to Major Ceely's house. Here Fox found 
them, surrounded by "rude people/' "more like 
Indians than like Christians." The proceedings 
in their examination were very irregular and 
informal. One of the priests who was present 
asked Fox why he didn't have his hair cut and 
other "frivolous" things were said and done. 
Finally they were put under a guard of soldiers, 
"who were hard and wild, like the justice himself; 
nevertheless we warned the people of the day 
of the Lord and declared the truth to them. The 
next day he sent us, guarded by a party of horse, 
with swords and pistols, to Redruth." 

The next day was Sunday — "First-day," Fox 
calls it — but the soldiers were determined, never- 
theless, to travel forward with their prisoners. 
It was, however, not easy to make progress. Fox 
insisted on preaching to the soldiers, while Pyott 
was at the same time preaching to the townspeople 
in Redruth. Then Fox went to give his message 
to the people in the town while Pyott spoke in 
his turn to the soldiers. William Salt, meantime, 
got away and went to the "steeple-house" to 
give a message to the priest and his congregation. 
The people got in "a mighty rage" and came with 
a rush, "ready to kill us," Fox says, "but I de- 
clared the day of the Lord and the word of eternal 



74 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

life" to them. "When we were got to the town's 
end," he continues, "I was moved of the Lord 
to go back again. . . . The soldiers drew out their 
pistols and swore I should not go back. I heeded 
them not, but rode back and they rode after me." 
And without the least fear of the soldiers' pistols 
he finished his religious mission in Redruth! 

In the evening of this strenuous Sunday the 
party arrived at Falmouth, then called Smethick, 
and the chief constable of the town and many 
"sober people" came to the inn to have discourse 
with Fox "concerning the things of God," and 
the tired man's heart was much refreshed. But 
the rough and lawless soldiers, who were under 
the direction of a thoroughly unprincipled leader, 
named Keat, continually annoyed and abused 
Fox and his friends. Keat brought "a rude and 
wicked man" into Fox's room at the inn, and 
"this evil-minded man" went "huffing up and 
down the room." Fox bade him "fear the Lord." 
"Whereupon," the Journal says, "he ran upon 
me, struck me with both hands, and placing his 
leg behind me, would fain have thrown me down, 
but he could not for I stood stiff and still, and 
let him strike!" 

The escort was ordered according to the magis- 
trate's warrant, to conduct the prisoners to the 
governor of Pendennis Castle, Captain Fox, if he 
was at home, if not to convey them to Launceston 



in England's worst prison 75 

Jail. As Captain Fox was not at home at the 
time, the Friends had to go on, with their royster- 
ing escort, to Launceston. On their journey 
thither they met General Desborough, a brother- 
in-law of Cromwell, who, under the Protector, ad- 
ministered the government in the six western 
counties. One of Desborough's officers at once 
recognized Fox and called out to him, "Oh, Mr. 
Fox, what are you doing here ? " "I am a prisoner," 
the latter replied. " Alack," said the officer, "for 
what?" Fox explained how he and his party had 
been arrested while engaged in religious work, and 
at once the military man offered to speak to 
Desborough about it and get him freed. The re- 
lease might easily have been secured had not a 
discussion arisen about the light of Christ within. 
Desborough said he did not believe in it and spoke 
strongly against it. That was too much for Fox to 
stand and he reproved the great man, who forth- 
with told the soldiers to proceed to Launceston. 

The little party had another miserable night in 
the inn at Bodmin, not far from their destination. 
The outrageous captain of the escort, Keat, under- 
took to put Fox in a room with a raving lunatic, 
who had "a naked rapier in his hand." "What 
now, Keat," Fox cried out, "what trick hast thou 
played now, to put me into a room where there is 
a man with his naked rapier?" "Oh," said he, 
"pray hold your tongue, for if you speak to this 



j6 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

man we cannot all rule him, he is so devilish." 
He finally got another room, away from the mad- 
man, but the "hard and darkened" soldiers drank 
and roared all night so that there was no sleep for 
the weary prisoners. 

The next morning they were brought to the 
terrible Cornwall Jail at Launceston where they 
were to spend the following eight months — from 
midwinter to early autumn. During the first 
nine weeks they were decently treated while they 
were waiting for their trial to come off. At about 
the spring equinox Chief Justice Glyn came to 
Launceston for the trial of the prisoners. The ru- 
mor had spread that Fox was likely to be hung and 
a multitude of people poured into the little town 
to see the famous Quaker go by. As the pikemen 
took Fox through the streets to the court room 
they had "much ado" to get through the crowd 
which packed the town. As the three Quakers with 
their hats on their heads filed into the room be- 
fore the bewigged Chief Justice, Fox "was moved 
to say, 'Peace be amongst you!'" Judge Glyn 
with a quizzical look turned to the jailer and said, 
"What be these you have brought here into 
court?" "Prisoners, my Lord," said the jailer, 
"Why do you not put off your hats?" the Judge 
asked the prisoners. No answer. "Put off your 
hats." Still neither answer nor action. "The 
court commands you to put off your hats," sternly 



IN ENGLAND S WORST PRISON 77 

said the judge. Then Fox quietly said, "Where 
did ever any magistrate, king or judge, from Moses 
to Daniel, command any to put off their hats, 
when they came before them in their courts ? And 
if the law of England doth command any such 
thing, show me that law either written or printed." 
"Take him away," shouted the Chief Justice, "I'll 
firk him," i. e., "trounce him." 

The prisoners were taken out and put in with 
the thieves who were awaiting trial. Soon the 
judge had them brought back into the court room. 
"Come," said the judge, "when had they hats 
from Moses to Daniel? Come, answer me. I 
have you fast now." Fox replied, "Thou mayest 
read in the third of Daniel that the three children 
were cast into the fiery furnace by Nebuchad- 
nezzar's command, with their coats, their hose and 
their hats on!" "Take them away!" shouted the 
judge. All day the strange proceedings went on 
in court. Absurd charges, which apparently no- 
body believed, were made against Fox by Major 
Ceely. Again and again the hat-issue arose. Once 
the jailer took off the hats and handed them to 
the prisoners who at once put them on again, 
Finally the three men were fined £13, 6s. 8d. for 
"contempt of court," and ordered to be imprisoned 
until the fine should be paid — which anybody 
might know would be never. 

Up till the time of the trial the three Quakers 



78 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

had been paying the jailer seven shillings a week 
apiece for their board and seven shillings for the 
keep of their horses. After the trial was over they 
refused to continue this payment. Whereupon 
the jailer, who was himself a criminal and bore 
the mark of a branding iron, became fierce with 
anger and thrust them into the appalling dungeon 
called "Doomsdale." Fox's account of this dun- 
geon is too awful to copy for my readers. One 
wonders how any person could have lived in it 
at all. In fact few ever did come out of it alive. 
It was generally believed in the prison that this 
dungeon was haunted by the ghosts of those who 
had died in it, and the jailer and his wild friends 
tried to scare Fox with this story of the ghosts. 
But he did not take fright much more easily than 
Luther did at the devils in Worms. " I told them," 
Fox says, " that if all the spirits and devils in hell 
were there, I was over them in the power of God 
and feared no such thing!" We may smile at 
Fox's refusal to take off his hat in court, which 
seems to a modern person a harmless courtesy, but 
nobody can well miss the brave and heroic spirit 
in this man, who looked upon "hat-honor" as 
downright disobedience to God. 

About midsummer an order of the court was 
issued declaring that the door of Doomsdale should 
be opened and that the prisoners should have 
permission to clean up the abominable dungeon 



IN ENGLAND S WORST PRISON 79 

and to buy their food in the town. A saintly 
woman, named Ann Downer, came down to Laun- 
ceston from London to cook their food and to 
give them what human service was allowed in the 
existing prison system. Another manifestation of 
love was given which deeply touched Fox's heart. 
Humphrey Norton went to Cromwell and offered 
to go to Doomsdale and suffer there in place of 
Fox if the Protector would give him permission 
to do it. Of course this could not be granted, but 
the request made a deep impression on Oliver 
Cromwell. He turned to his courtiers and said, 
"Which of you would do so much for me, if I 
were in the same condition ?" Hugh Peters, the 
famous preacher, chaplain to the Protector, told 
Cromwell that there was no better way to spread 
the teachings of the Quakers than to keep George 
Fox shut up in Launceston Castle. The net result 
was that an order came from Whitehall to Major 
General Desborough that some way must be 
found to free the Quakers who were in Launceston 
Jail. 



CHAPTER IX 

ANOTHER KIND OF CATASTROPHE 

It took some time to get George Fox out of 
Launceston Jail even after General Desborough 
received the request from London to have him 
set at liberty. In the first place Desborough 
undertook to secure a promise from Fox that he 
would go home and not preach any more. He 
would of course have spent the rest of his days in 
Doomsdale before he would make that promise. 
Next, there was the problem of the unpaid fees 
to the jailer. A Puritan named Colonel Bennett 
held a lease of the jail and he received a certain 
proportion of the fees which the jailer squeezed 
out of the wretched prisoners who were put into 
Launceston Castle. Fox and his friends contended 
that they were "innocent sufferers" and could pay 
no fees for the privilege of staying in Doomsdale! 
On this point, again, Fox was ready to stand out 
forever, but the authorities finally yielded and let 
the prisoners go, without any conditions, on the 
13th of September, 1656. One very amusing 
episode which occurred during this imprisonment 
will serve to show the power which Fox, even when 
in a filthy prison where the jailer called him "a 

80 



in England's worst prison 8i 

hatchet-faced dog," exercised on men. A certain 
Colonel Rouse, with a large company of attendants 
and companions, came to Launceston to see Fox. 
"He was as full of words and talk," Fox says, "as 
ever I heard in my life, so that there was no speak- 
ing to him. At length I asked him whether he 
had ever been at school." "At school!" said he, 
"yes." "At school!" said the soldiers, "doth he 
say so to our colonel who is a scholar?" "Then," 
said Fox, "if he be a scholar he ought to know 
what belongs to questions and answers, he should 
be still and receive answers to what he hath said." 
"Then," the account continues, "I was moved to 
speak the word of life to him in God's dreadful 
power; which came so over him that he could not 
open his mouth: his face swelled and was red like 
a turkey; his lips moved and he mumbled some- 
thing; but the people thought he would have fallen 
down. I stepped to him and he said he was never 
so in his life before: for the Lord's power stopped 
the evil power in him; so that he was almost 
choked. The man was ever after very loving to 
Friends, and not so full of airy words to us. The 
Lord's power came over him, and the rest that 
were with him." 

It was at this time, while Fox was in Launceston, 
that the "Fifth-Monarchy-men," as they were 
called, were going about in England trying to con- 
vince the people that Christ was going to come that 



82 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

year and set up His thousand-year reign on the 
earth. There had been, they declared, four great 
world-kingdoms and now Christ's reign would end 
them all and begin the Fifth and last kingdom. 
Fox told them they were looking in the wrong 
place for Christ and His kingdom. They thought 
it was to be an outward kingdom, like Caesar's, 
and that Christ would come as a monarch, like 
Charlemagne, but Fox told them that Christ had 
come already and was now here. He comes as a 
divine and heavenly presence to the souls of men 
and wishes to rule their lives and to reign in their 
hearts. His kingdom comes as fast as people 
learn to live His way and to do His will and to 
let His spirit conquer the evil in them and raise 
up the good. Nobody will ever find Him if they 
look for Him in the sky or if they expect to see 
Him sitting on a throne in some capital city, like 
London. 

As soon as the doors of Launceston Castle were 
opened to them the three prisoners who had 
suffered so unmercifully for nine dreary months 
rode away on their horses, free men and full of 
joy. A worse disaster, however, than Doomsdale 
was awaiting Fox. That was the "fair' of his old 
friend and fellow-laborer, James Nayler. As the 
three men continued their journey they came to 
Exeter, and here they found James Nayler and 
many other Friends in prison. Fox went to the 






in England's worst prison 83 

prison to visit his friends and he at once saw that 
James was out of the way and going wrong; as 
Fox puts it, "he had run out into im aginations." 
He had formed wild ideas, was misguided, and 
was dreaming that he himself was to be treated 
as a most exalted person. Fox was as gentle as 
a mother to those who worked and suffered with 
him, but he could also be like a flame of fire toward 
those who were undermining the great work which 
he believed God had sent him to do in the world. 
He plainly told his old friend that he was off the 
track and was turning against the power of God. 
He showed him how dangerous was the path of 
pride and how awful it was to turn light into dark- 
ness, but the frank, well-meant words of warning 
fell on deaf ears. Nayler tried to make a show of 
love and would have kissed Fox, but the latter 
would receive no sham kisses from one whose 
spirit was plainly wrong. " James," he said, 
"it will be harder for thee to get down thy rude 
company [of followers] than it was for thee to set 
them up." 

Poor Nayler was not altogether to blame for 
the wild, wrong course he took. He had, as Fox 
said, "run out into imaginations." He had be- 
come temporarily insane. The strain of his work, 
the terrible persecutions he had undergone, the 
dreadful prison experiences, and the unrestrained 
imaginations and expectations prevailing around 



84 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

him, had all gone to his head and set it into sad 
disorder. Soon after Fox left him at Exeter, he 
was freed from prison and went to Bristol. Here 
he allowed his misguided followers to get up a 
"triumphal procession/' while he imitated Christ 
riding into Jerusalem. The little party of eight, 
surrounding Nayler who rode on horseback, sang, 
"Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Israel. " Through 
the rain and mud, the women spreading their 
garments in the way, the strange, mad group 
trudged on into Bristol, where they were all ar- 
rested and thrust into prison. They all were sub- 
jects for an insane asylum and they all needed the 
care of a skillful physician of the mind, but they got 
instead the only kind of treatment that England 
knew how to give such people in the seventeenth 
century. They called them "blasphemers" and 
they dealt with them as criminals to be fright- 
fully punished. After months of investigation 
and trial James Nayler received his awful sentence. 
He was to be set in the pillory in the Palace yard 
at Westminster for two hours, and then be whipped 
by the hangman through the streets for two hours 
more. Three days later he was to stand again 
in the pillory from eleven to one, when his tongue 
was to be bored through with a hot iron and the 
letter B (for blasphemer) was to be branded with 
a burning iron on his forehead. Then he was to 
be taken to Bristol and made to ride through the 



ANOTHER KIND OF CATASTROPHE 85 

city on horseback, with his face backward, and 
be whipped in the market place. Finally, he was 
to be imprisoned in Bridewell, London, until 
Parliament should vote to release him, his im- 
prisonment to be in solitary confinement, at hard 
labor, without the use of pen, ink or paper. As 
Nayler listened to the appalling sentence, while 
the Speaker of the House of Commons read it to 
him, he said, "God has given me a body: God 
will, I hope, give me a spirit to endure it. The 
Lord lay not these things to your charge." 

Without complaining the poor victim took his 
punishment. "He shrinked a little when the iron 
came upon his forehead/' but though the body 
might wince the old-time spirit of the man re- 
turned and rose to meet the awful crisis. He was 
kept in solitary confinement for three years and 
then Parliament — the "Rump" — voted his re- 
lease. As soon as he could do so, after his release 
from confinement, Nayler went to find George 
Fox and to ask his forgiveness for the disgrace 
and trouble which his deeds and acts had brought 
upon the Society of Friends. Fox himself was 
very ill and broken at this time and could not see 
him, and in "a quiet spirit" and noble frame of 
mind, the heavily disciplined man waited his 
time for reconciliation. The reconciliation came 
in London a little later, when "a healing spirit 
did abound that day." James Nayler made a 



86 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

public confession of his errors and mistakes. There 
were few dry eyes as the Friends gathered there in 
the London meeting listened to the man who had 
suffered so much for his blunders. George Fox 
was there and he seemed "clothed with precious 
wisdom/' as he "healed up the breach" between 
himself and his friend. 

Only a few months of life remained after this 
for James Nayler. He started in the autumn 
days of the Restoration year, 1660, to walk from 
London to his home at Wakefield in Yorkshire. 
He was weak and ill — too weak and ill to journey 
alone on foot, but he persevered by the force of his 
unconquered spirit. He sat long periods at a time 
by the roadside, lost in meditation, thinking of the 
true home and the real country he was soon to 
see when all his pains and trials would be over. 
Robbers attacked him near Huntingdon and left 
the poor broken man bound. He was found by 
kind friends who cared for him tenderly until his 
spirit slipped away "to where beyond these voices 
there is peace." 

About two hours before he died James Nayler 
spoke his farewell message, which is one of the 
most beautiful testimonies that any erring, re- 
pentant, much-forgiven man has left behind him. 
It is as follows: 

"There is a spirit which I feel that delights to 
do no evil nor to revenge any wrong, but delights 



ANOTHER KIND OF CATASTROPHE 87 

to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in 
the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and 
contention, and to weary out all exaltation and 
cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to it- 
self, It sees to the end of all temptations. As it 
bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in 
thoughts to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears 
it, for its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting 
love unfeigned; and takes its kingdom with en- 
treaty and not with contention, and keeps it by 
lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, 
though none else regard it, or can own its life. 
It's conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without 
any to pity it, nor doth it murmur at grief and 
oppression. It never rejoiceth but through suf- 
ferings: for with the world's joy it is murdered. 
I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship 
therein with them who lived in dens and desolate 
places in the earth, who through death obtained 
this resurrection and eternal holy life. " 

This tragic experience had a great effect upon 
the later life of George Fox. It made him very 
much more careful to explain what he meant by the 
light and life of Christ in the soul. He saw now 
how easy it was for unbalanced people to push his 
idea too far and to make impossible claims about 
themselves. It was a hard and bitter lesson, but he 
thoroughly learned it, and from this point onward 
he was restrained and cautious in his expressions. 



88 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

We must now go back to the period following 
the release from Launceston. Fox went steadily 
on with his travels, holding meetings, many of 
which were attended by great crowds of people, 
sometimes by thousands. Coming to London in 
October, 1656, he had another remarkable talk 
with Oliver Cromwell. Near Hyde Park he saw a 
great concourse of people, and looking more care- 
fully he espied the Protector in the midst of the 
throng. He rode straight up to the side of the 
Protector's coach. Some of the lifeguards started 
to put Fox away, but Cromwell at once recognized 
him and forbade the guards to disturb him. "So," 
Fox says, "I rode by him [i. e., by his side] declaring 
unto him what the Lord gave me to say unto him 
of his condition and of the sufferings of Friends 
in the nation, and how contrary to Christ this 
persecution was and to the apostles and Christian- 
ity, and so I rode by his coach till we came to 
James* Park gate, and he desired me to come to 
his house." 

The next day Cromwell told one of his wife's 
maids, Mary Saunders, a Quakeress, that he had 
some good news for her. "George Fox has come 
to town," he said, "and he rode from Hyde Park 
to James' Park by my side." A little later, Fox 
availed himself of Cromwell's invitation to his 
house, and he weht with Edward Pyott, his prison- 
companion, to Whitehall. Once more Fox urged 



ANOTHER KIND OF CATASTROPHE 89 

upon the Protector the release of Friends who were 
in prison and the cessation of religious persecution. 
Then he directed Cromwell to the light of Christ 
in his own heart, but the Protector had just been 
having an interview with the famous Vice-Chan- 
cellor of Oxford, Dr. Owen, a man very much 
opposed to the Quaker teaching, and he spoke 
against the light and belittled it. This attitude 
aroused Fox, as it always did, and he discussed 
the subject with much fervor and earnestness. 
"The power of the Lord," Fox says, "rose up in 
me and I was moved to bid him lay down his 
crown at the feet of Jesus." Fox was standing 
by a table and Cromwell came over and sat on 
the edge of the table by him and they went on 
discussing the light of Christ but without getting 
any closer together in their religious views. There 
can, however, be no doubt from the accounts that 
Cromwell had a deep respect for Fox and it would 
appear that he thought of him quite iri the light of 
a religious prophet. We shall hear more at a later 
critical moment about laying the "crown" at the 
feet of Jesus ! 

After an extensive journey through the counties 
as far north as Yorkshire, with much success in 
gaining convincements and with some hairbreadth 
escapes, Fox went forth to break new ground in 
Wales and Scotland. He had a powerful helper 
for the Welsh campaign in John ap John, a fervent 



90 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

and faithful Welshman, who had been "convinced" 
at Swarthmore in 1653. Great numbers of people 
in Wales were brought into the Society through 
this visit of 1657, and later on they migrated almost 
in a body to Pennsylvania, when William Penn 
began his "holy experiment' ' in that great colony. 
A really wonderful meeting was held by the band 
of Quaker travelers in Radnorshire where the 
people lay in mighty throngs, "like a leaguer." 
"I had a great travail on me/' Fox says, "for the 
salvation of the people. And so I passed to the 
meeting and stood atop of a chair about three 
hours, sometimes leaned my hand on a man's head, 
and stood a pretty while before I began to speak. 
Many people sat on horseback: and at last I felt 
the power of the Lord went over all, and the Lord's 
everlasting life and truth shined over all, and the 
Scriptures were opened to them." The people 
seem to have been deeply impressed and "they 
turned to the Lord," as Fox puts it. 

The journey in Scotland was not so rich in 
results as was the one through Wales. The Scotch 
people had accepted the religious system of John 
Calvin as interpreted to them by John Knox and 
this system was very unlike the Quaker conception 
of religion. Fox found few persons there eager 
for his teaching or responsive to it. They had not 
been "prepared" for such ideas and they did not 
give him the welcome which he found in many 



ANOTHER KIND OF CATASTROPHE 9I 

places. And yet he says, "When I first set my 
horse's feet upon Scottish ground, I felt the seed 
of God to sparkle about me, like innumerable 
sparks of fire. ,, He adds, however, "There is 
abundance of thick, cloddy earth of hypocrisy and 
falseness above, and a briery, brambly nature, 
which is to be burnt up with God's Word, and 
ploughed up with His spiritual plough, before God's 
Seed brings forth heavenly and spiritual fruit to 
His glory. But the husbandman is to wait in 
patience/' 

Some of the very choicest spirits in the Society 
of Friends came from Scotland and there was 
undoubtedly "a seed of God" there, but the Pres- 
byterian ministers were determined to make life 
as uncomfortable as possible for Fox while he was 
trying to find his scattered "seed." He was 
ordered to appear before the Council in Edinburgh. 
As he entered the room his hat was removed by 
the doorkeeper and hung up until he came out. 
He stood for a little while before the Council and 
as no one said anything to him, he was "moved 
of the Lord" to say "Peace be amongst you; wait 
in the fear of the Lord, that ye may receive His 
wisdom from above by which all things were made 
and created; that by it ye may all be ordered, 
and may order aH things under your hand to God's 
glory." The Council asked what business he had 
in Scotland. "I came to visit the seed of God," 



92 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

he told them. "You must depart the nation of 
Scotland by this day sen-night/' i. e., in a week, 
the Council ordered. He paid no attention to the 
order, but went on with his work of visiting " the 
seed." He came back to Edinburgh, passed the 
sentries, rode up the street to the market place 
and out at the gate. "We rode as it were," he 
says, "against the cannon's mouth, or the sword's 
point, but the Lord's power and immediate hand 
carried us over the heads of all!" 



CHAPTER X 

THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH ERA 

Great changes in the government and in the 
life of England were now coming on. Oliver Crom- 
well, the Lord Protector, died on the 3rd of Sep- 
tember, 1658, and a period of uncertainty and 
perplexity followed the great man's departure. 
George Fox appears to have followed political and 
public events with a keen and watchful eye and 
to have entered deeply into the struggle through 
which the nation was passing. In the spring of 
1657 there was a rumor afloat that Cromwell was 
to be crowned king. On the 25th of March of 
that year Parliament decided to offer the crown 
to him and to request him to take the office and the 
title. As soon as Fox heard of it he went at once 
to warn Cromwell against accepting the kingship. 
"I met him/' the Journal says, "in the Park, and 
told him that they that would put a crown on him 
would take away his life, and he asked me, What 
did I say? And I said again, They that sought 
to put a crown on him would take away his life 
and I bid him mind the crown that was immortal, 
and he thanked me and bid me go to his house. 
And then I was moved to write to him and told 

93 



94 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

him how he would ruin his family and posterity 
and bring darkness upon the nation if he did so." 
On the 3rd of April and finally emphatically on the 
8 th of April, Cromwell refused to be made king. 

Fox at this time wrote many papers to the 
Protector on a variety of subjects. One of the 
most interesting of his letters was the one he 
wrote to Cromwell's beloved daughter, Lady 
Elizabeth Claypole, when she lay ill with an in- 
curable disease. "Friend/' the letter begins to 
the great Lady who had herself been a "seeker/* 
"be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit 
from thy own thoughts, and then thou wilt feel 
the principle of God to turn thy mind to the Lord, 
from whom cometh life, whereby thou mayest 
receive His strength and power to allay all bluster- 
ings, storms and tempests," and the letter ends 
with these noble words: "And so thou shalt come 
to know the Seed of God, which is the heir of the 
promise of God, and of the world which hath no 
end. . . . Ye shall receive the power of an end- 
less life, the power of God which is immortal; 
which brings the immortal soul up to the immortal 
God, in whom it doth rejoice. So in the name of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, God Almighty strengthen 
thee. G. F." We are told that the letter "staid 
the mind" of Lady Elizabeth and was afterwards 
used to "settle the minds" of others who were 
passing through suffering. 



THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH ERA 95 

One more meeting occurred between Fox and 
the Protector. It was about the middle of August, 
two weeks before Cromwell's death. Fox says, 
"I met him riding into Hampton Court Park, and 
before I came at him, he was riding at the head 
of his life-guards, and I saw and felt a waft of 
death go forth against him, so that he looked like 
a dead man." Fox spoke to him about the suffer- 
ings of Friends, great numbers of whom were at 
this time lying in the prisons of England. Crom- 
well, as usual, was cordial and friendly to him and 
invited him to the Palace. He went the next 
day, but found the Protector too ill to see him. 
"So," Fox writes, "I passed away and saw him 
no more." Once more unexpectedly he did see 
him, or at least his body, for when Charles II. was 
safely established on the throne, Cromwell's body, 
with the mighty spirit gone out of it, was dug up 
from its grave and hung on the gallows at Tyburn, 
and Fox says: "I saw him hanging there." 

In the period of disturbance, distress and al- 
most anarchy which followed the passing of the 
great man, no one knew what the future had for 
England. The nation was "rocking," the various 
parties, as Fox says, were "plucking each other 
to pieces," the old order was changing, yielding 
place to new, and the stoutest hearts were full 
of foreboding. For George Fox it was a time of 
unusual travail of spirit. He passed through a 



96 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

period of serious illness and mental trouble, such 
as he had not known since the days of his early 
quest for light. He lay for some weeks only 
partly conscious at a Friend's house in Reading. 
His body underwent a profound change, his 
countenance was altered, and many thought he 
would not come back to life and health again. 
As he lay in his strange borderland state, he 
seemed to have a sight of what was coming to pass 
and he felt that he could read what was passing 
in the minds of those around him. He had, too, 
a sight and sense of the restoration of King 
Charles. Gradually he came back once more 
to health and normal condition again. "The 
Lord preserved me," he says, "by His power 
and spirit through and over all, and in His power 
I came to London again." In a short time he 
was ready for hard journeys, heavy work, great 
meetings and the stiff persecution which was an 
almost continuous part of his life. 

On the 8th of May, 1660, Charles Stuart was 
proclaimed king and on the 29th of the same 
month he entered London. Already on the 4th 
of the preceding April Charles had issued his 
famous declaration on the subject of liberty of 
conscience, called the Declaration of Breda, from 
the Dutch city where it was set forth. It said: 
"We do declare a liberty to tender consciences, 
and that no man shall be disquieted or called in 



THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH ERA 97 

question for differences of opinion in matters of 
religion, which do not disturb the peace of the king- 
dom. " George Fox and his friends thought when 
they read these fine words that their troubles 
were over and that now they could hold their 
precious truth in peace. They were, however, 
to be sadly disappointed. 

Already before Cromwell's death George Fox 
had begun holding great general meetings once 
or twice a year for the purpose of spreading his 
teaching and for organizing the movement which 
he had started. Immense crowds of people came 
to these general meetings. One was held at Balby 
in Yorkshire in the autumn of 1656. Another 
of the same sort was held at Skipton, also in York- 
shire, in 1657, and these Skipton general meetings 
were held every year for some time. A great 
general meeting, "for the whole nation," was held 
at Luton in Bedfordshire, "at John Crook's 
house," in May of 1658. It lasted three days 
and was "attended by three or four thousand 
people." The inns were overcrowded and the 
visitors overflowed into the nearby towns. "A 
glorious meeting it was," Fox says, "and the 
everlasting gospel was preached, and many re- 
ceived it, . . . which gospel brought life and im- 
mortality to light in them and shined over all." 

Fox set forth his religious truth to the great 
concourse of people in two sermons. In the first 



98 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

one he spoke specially to those who had not yet 
accepted his teaching and in this he expounded 
his ideas about God and Christ and the light in 
the soul of man. In the second sermon, he gave 
much wise advice to his followers and especially 
to those who were accustomed to preach. He 
urged them to "dwell in the living, immoveable 
Word of God" and to talk about "the things they 
lived in," i. e., the things they knew from their 
own experience. He told them not to say too 
much — "take heed of many words," and he kept 
saying that everything must be fresh and living 
— it must "come out of the life and reach the life 
in others." He said that the minister who expects 
to reach people must always "feel that he stands 
in the presence of the Lord God." He warned 
them against "customary preaching/' i. e., preach- 
ing just because it is the custom to have a sermon, 
and he told them that they ought always to aim 
in their preaching to bring people to such an 
experience of God in their own souls that they 
could get along without preaching. "Keep 
out of all jangling," he said to them, which means, 
"do not contend and disagree, but work and think 
and speak in love and patience and spiritual 
power." 

A party of horsemen came to Luton to arrest 
Fox at the close of this great meeting, but for some 
unexplained reason they did not molest him. He 



THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH ERA 99 

was walking in the garden when the soldiers 
arrived and they told John Crook, pointing to 
Fox, that he was the man they were after. "But," 
Fox says, "the Lord's power so confounded them 
that they never came into the garden, but they 
went their way in a rage." 

One of the most important events in the period 
before the Restoration was the planting of Quaker- 
ism in the American colonies and in the West 
Indian islands. At the Skipton general meeting 
of 1658 a document was issued which finely says: 
"We have heard of great things done by the mighty 
power of God in many nations beyond the seas, 
whither He hath called forth many of our dear 
brethren and sisters to preach the everlasting 
gospel." 

It seems strange to us now that the island of 
Barbadoes was the spiritual center in the western 
world from which Quakerism spread to the colo- 
nies of the Atlantic coast. One of the pioneer 
Quaker travelers calls this island "the nursery of 
the truth," and we shall see later that George Fox 
went to Barbadoes before he came to our shores. 
The first "arrivals" were women. Mary Fisher 
and Ann Austin reached Barbadoes toward the 
end of 1655 and after a successful campaign in the 
island they struck out for Boston in the summer 
of 1656. About the same time Elizabeth Harris 
went to the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Mary 



IOO THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

Fisher and Ann Austin were very quickly expelled 
from Puritan Massachusetts and so, too, was a 
party of eight Quaker missionaries who arrived 
in Boston harbor from London two days after the 
two women had been banished. Severe laws were 
passed and everybody in Massachusetts now hoped 
that they had built the fences so high and tight 
around the colony that no more Quakers would 
get over them or through them. But it did not 
prove to be so! 

In the summer of 1657 a party of eleven sailed 
from England for America in the little ship, 
Woodbouse, owned and captained by a remarkable 
Quaker from Holderness, named Robert Fowler, 
who dedicated his ship and his life to the service 
of the Lord. In his strange ship-log, or narrative 
of the journey, Fowler says, "We saw the Lord 
leading our vessel, even as it were a man leading a 
horse by the head." Through strange experiences 
the little ship was guided on until it reached 
New Amsterdam, now New York City. Some 
of the Quaker missionaries went to Long Island 
where they made many converts to their truth, 
and the rest went on in the Woodhouse^ through 
the dangerous Hell-gate passage, to Rhode Island. 
From here the Quaker travelers scattered out to 
places where they had heard of groups prepared 
to receive their message. They were especially 
successful in Sandwich and in Salem in Massachu- 



THE END OF THE COMMONWEALTH ERA IOI 

setts, while large groups of Quakers were formed in 
Newport, Providence and other towns of Rhode 
Island, which the Puritans called "the island of 
error. " Meantime the Puritan authorities arose 
in their might to stop this hated Quaker "inva- 
sion." Laws were passed to stamp out the new 
religion and to punish with whipping, imprison- 
ment or death every Quaker missionary who ap- 
peared. But it was not easy to frighten away 
Quakers who believed the Lord sent them to 
Massachusetts. So they kept on coming and went 
up to Boston to "look the bloody laws in the face." 
Four Quakers were hung on Boston Common, 
three of them visitors from England — William 
Robinson, Marmaduke Stephenson, and William 
Leddra — and one a native woman, who at the 
time had her home in Rhode Island, Mary Dyer. 
It was, however, impossible to stop the " inva- 
sion. " Soon, in almost every colony along the 
coast, Quaker meetings grew up and the followers 
of George Fox abounded. In a later chapter we 
shall follow the travels of Fox as he went up and 
down the Atlantic coast line, visiting the meetings 
and establishing the work begun by these valiant 
pioneers. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE PERIOD OF FIERCE PERSECUTION 

Oliver Cromwell in his heart truly loved lib- 
erty and hated persecution. He understood the 
spirit of George Fox and apparently appreciated 
it. The Quakers were compelled to suffer many 
hardships while he was Lord Protector of England 
but never because Cromwell personally approved 
of that method of dealing with religious opinions. 
He had to let many things happen which he would 
have had different if he could have followed out 
his own ideals. George Fox, however, did not 
altogether understand the complicated social and 
political conditions which prevailed around him, 
and he too severely blamed the Protector for his 
course. He welcomed the restoration of the Stuarts 
and expected, in the light of the great Declaration 
of Breda, that days of peaceful expansion were 
now before his beloved Society. Just the opposite 
of what he hoped and expected really came to 
pass, but here, again, the persecution did not come 
from the evil will or spirit of the King. He dis- 
approved of it and disliked it, but he felt that, 
under the existing conditions, he had to allow 
persecution to take its ruthless course. 

102 



THE PERIOD OF FIERCE PERSECUTION IO3 

Charles II. entered London, as we have seen, 
in May, 1660, and about the same time Fox was a 
welcome guest at Swarthmore Hall, from which as 
a center he was working among the groups of 
Friends in the Westmoreland district. Judge 
Fell had died in 1658 and Margaret Fell was now 
the full mistress of the manor. Her whole heart 
was in the work of publishing what Fox and his 
friends called "the truth." She was a strong per- 
sonality, an able woman, a real leader and she 
had become one of the greatest forces in the new 
Quaker movement. Before Fox had been many 
days in her house four officers came with a warrant 
to arrest him and take him away to Lancaster. 
They took him first to Ulverston where they 
watched him during the night for fear he might 
slip away up the chimney and elude them! They 
bragged much of their success in capturing the 
famous leader, one of the officers saying: "I did 
not think that a thousand men could have taken 
this man prisoner." Next morning, when some 
Friends of the neighborhood, with Margaret Fell 
and her daughters, came to see him start off on 
his journey to Lancaster, the officers took alarm 
and cried out: "Will they rescue him! will they 
rescue him!" Fox at once quieted their fears 
and showed them the spirit he was made of. The 
officers put him on a "little horse" — hardly more 
than a pony — which was led by a halter. They 



IO4 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

beat the horse and made him kick and run. Where- 
upon Fox slipped off the pony's back and protested 
against the abuse of the dumb creature. The odd 
procession finally covered the fourteen miles to 
Lancaster and as the officers marched into the 
city with their prisoner he, sitting on his little 
horse, was "moved to sing praises unto the Lord 
in His triumphing power over all." Multitudes 
of people in Lancaster crowded the streets to see 
the prisoner go by and they cried out: "Look at 
his eyes ! Look at his eyes ! " 

He was examined before Justice Porter, who 
sternly asked him "why he came down into the 
country at this troublesome time?" — which shows 
that they feared that Fox was trying to foment a 
rebellion! He replied, "I come to visit my breth- 
ren." " But you have great meetings up and down 
the country," the justice said. "Yes we have 
great meetings," answered Fox, "but they are 
peaceable and we are a peaceable people." The 
justice refused to let Fox see a copy of the warrant 
and charged him with being "a disturber of the 
nation," "an enemy of the king/' a dangerous 
man who was "endeavoring to raise a new war 
and imbrue the nation in blood again." He was 
committed to the "Dark House," a miserable 
dungeon in Lancaster Castle, where he was kept a 
close prisoner, badly treated, threatened with hang- 
ing and given no chance to defend himself legally. 



THE PERIOD OF FIERCE PERSECUTION IO5 

Margaret Fell, meantime, went up to London 
with a strong protest against the injustice com- 
mitted against her friend. The King ordered that 
Fox be brought up to London for trial, before the 
Court of the King's Bench. Justice Porter went 
to London to make a stand against his prisoner, 
but, as he had a very bad record with which to 
face the Stuart king and his cavaliers, he soon 
slunk away and hurried back home. While the 
trial was proceeding, "a Gentleman of the Bed- 
chamber named Marsh," [Richard Marche] came 
to the three judges who were conducting the trial 
and told them that it was the King's pleasure that 
"Fox should be set at liberty, seeing that no ac- 
cuser came up against him." He was released on 
October 25th, having been arrested on June 3rd. 

An unfortunate outbreak of the "Fifth Mon- 
archy Men" occurred in London, January 6th, 
1 66 1, which threw the whole city into commotion 
and fear. Fox was at this time in serious danger 
since the police and soldiers suspected almost 
everybody and acted without judgment or re- 
straint. Once more "the Gentleman of the Bed- 
chamber, Esquire Marsh" came to his rescue 
and protected him until the sudden storm was 
over. Throughout the whole country the excite- 
ment spread and the Quakers were in many places 
confused with the unbalanced Fifth Monarchy 
people who were being everywhere hunted out. 



lo6 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

The king, however, at this period exercised his 
royal power in favor of Friends in many instances. 
It was at this time that, through the intercession 
of Edward Burrough, he sent his mandate to the 
magistrates in Massachusetts and ordered them 
to release all Quakers imprisoned in that colony. 
The king sent his commands by the hand of Samuel 
Shattuck, who, as a Quaker, had been banished 
on pain of death from the colony! It was too late 
to save Mary Dyer, William Robinson, Marma- 
duke Stephenson and William Leddra. The first 
three had been executed while Fox was in prison 
in Lancaster and he tells us that he had "a per- 
fect sense of their sufferings at the time," as though, 
he says, " the halter had been about my own neck." 
But these favors toward the Quakers were only 
temporary. New troubles of a very serious sort 
now began to arise and every person who accepted 
the position of Fox was tested as by fire. 

The Act of Uniformity was passed in 1662 by 
which all clergymen were compelled to declare their 
assent and consent to everything contained in the 
Book of Common Prayer of the English Church. 
Under this Act about two thousand Puritan min- 
isters, who refused to give their "assent and con- 
sent" were ejected from their churches. This 
terrible Act did not directly affect Fox and his 
followers, but it showed very plainly what treat- 
ment was likely to be meted out to those who did 



THE PERIOD OF FIERCE PERSECUTION I07 

not conform in every particular to the established 
church. 

Another Act followed this one in 1664, called 
the Conventicle Act. By this Act it became a 
crime for more than five persons to hold a meeting < 
together in any place, if the meeting were not in 
conformity with the Church of England. The 
penalty for the first offense was £5 (twenty-five 
dollars) or three months' imprisonment; for the 
second offense £10 (fifty dollars) or six months' 
imprisonment; for the third offense the penalty 
was banishment to some foreign plantation, or 
the payment of £100 (five hundred dollars) for 
redemption. This Conventicle Act struck straight 
at the life of the Quaker meeting. If more than 
five Friends met to worship God they were all 
likely to be arrested and fined, and as Friends 
always refused to pay such fines, they were sure 
to be thrust into the dreadful prisons of the period. 

There was still another law which gave the 
Quakers almost as much trouble as did the Con- 
venticle Act. This was a law, passed in May, 
1662, providing that all persons who refused to 
take an oath should have a similar series of fines 
or imprisonment to those which were imposed 
upon persons who violated the Conventicle Act. 
Friends had a profound conscientious objection 
to taking any form of oath. They believed that 
Christ forbade swearing and they insisted that 



108 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

a Christian ought always to speak the truth 
without taking an oath. But every time a Friend 
was brought into court on any charge, it was 
always easy to catch him by asking him to take 
an oath. He would never do it and then, under this 
law of 1662, his punishment followed. This Law 
of May, 1662, also made it an offense for five or 
more Quakers to assemble together in a religious 
meeting not authorized by law. 

Friends everywhere defied the Conventicle Act. 
They went on with their meetings as though noth- 
ing had happened. The officers found it very 
difficult to deal with these strange people who 
showed no fear of prisons and who put their 
consciences above everything else on earth. The 
officers would break in on a quiet meeting, but 
they could not decide who should be arrested. 
There was no clergyman who represented the 
congregation. Everybody was on the same dem- 
ocratic level. If they carried away all the men 
then the women went right on with the meeting. 
In at least one case, in the meeting at Reading, 
when the officers carried away both the men and 
the women, the children gathered and held the 
meeting without any grown-up people to direct 
them. It was pretty hard to conquer or stamp 
out a movement possessed and guided by a spirit 
like that. 

It was, however, a terrible ordeal. "Our 



THE PERIOD OF FIERCE PERSECUTION IO9 

meetings are daily broken up," Fox writes, "by 
men with clubs and arms, though we meet peace- 
ably according to the practice of God's people 
in primitive times, and our friends are thrown 
into waters and trod upon, till the very blood 
gushes out of them, the number of which abuses 
can hardly be uttered. " During the first two 
years of the Restoration period more than three 
thousand Friends were thrown into prison and 
when the severer laws came into operation the 
number mounted very much higher and many 
of those who went away to prison never came 
home again to their families, for prisons then were 
deadly places and often like "pest houses/' 

It was at this time that George Fox underwent 
his longest imprisonment. When he was most 
needed to help his Friends bear the stress and 
strain of the great persecution he was separated 
from them and was in a dungeon from which, 
a part of the time at least, it looked as though he 
might never come out. In the autumn of 1663 
Fox was in the northern counties and after "a 
precious meeting" at Cartmel, he came across 
the Sands to Swarthmore Hall, where he heard 
that Colonel Kirkby, whom Fox calls Kirby, of 
Kirkby Hall, a Member of Parliament and a strong 
supporter of the Stuarts, was hunting for him 
and was determined to have him arrested. He 
was "moved of the Lord" to go straight to Kirkby 



IIO THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

Hall and to ask the Colonel what he wanted of him ! 
The next morning after the "moving" came to 
him Fox started off for Kirkby Hall which was 
five miles away. He found the Flemings who were 
kinsmen of the Kirkbys and many other gentry 
of the neighborhood assembled in the Hall, to 
take leave of Colonel Kirkby who was starting 
for London to attend Parliament. Fox addressed 
him in his usual straightforward manner: "I came 
to visit thee, to know what thou hast to say 
to me and to see whether thou hast anything 
against me." The Colonel was evidently some- 
what embarrassed and said in the presence of all 
his guests: "As I am a gentleman I have nothing 
against you. But Mistress Fell must not keep 
[i. e., hold] great meetings in her house, for they are 
contrary to the Act." Fox replied: "That Act 
does not apply to us but it is meant for those who 
meet to plot and contrive and raise insurrection 
against the king, whereas we are no such people. 
Thou knowest that those who meet at Margaret 
Fell's house are thy neighbors and are a peaceable 
people." The Colonel, after more friendly con- 
versation, gave Fox his hand and said: "I have 
nothing against you." He went on to his duties 
in London and his visitor returned to Swarthmore 
Hall. 

A short time after this the justices and deputy 
lieutenants of the district had a private meeting 



THE PERIOD OF PERSECUTION FIERCE III 

in Holker Hall where Justice Preston lived. They 
decided at this meeting to arrest Fox. He heard 
overnight of their decision and of their plans, 
and he might easily have escaped, but that was 
not his way. He says: "I considered that, as 
there was the noise of a plot in the north, if I 
should go away they might fall upon Friends; 
but if I gave up myself to be taken, it might stop 
them and Friends should escape the better. So 
I gave up to be taken, and prepared myself for 
their coming. " 

Next day an officer came with sword and pistols, 
to take him. He was much surprised to find that 
Fox knew all about the proposed arrest and might 
have been "forty miles away," if he had cared to 
escape. He quietly said, "I am ready to go," and, 
accompanied by Margaret Fell, he went with the 
officer to Holker Hall to meet his accusers. 



CHAPTER XII 

THREE YEARS IN CASTLES 

The great scene in Holker Hall has been painted 
by a modern artist. Three justices "examined" 
the Quaker prisoner, endeavoring in vain to un- 
earth some ground on which to condemn him. 
He was more than their match, however, and asked 
them questions which they could not answer. 
No sign of any connection with a plot could be 
fixed upon him and his entire testimony was as 
clear as a bell: "We stand," he said, "for all good 
government." 

When no ground of condemnation could be 
discovered, the justices, who were determined 
to make a show of their loyalty to the new king 
and were resolved to commit Fox to prison on 
some charge, decided to catch him with the de- 
mand for an oath. "Bring the Book [the Bible]", 
one of them cried, "and put the oaths of allegiance 
and supremacy to him." This justice himself was 
a Roman Catholic and, as the prisoner slyly sug- 
gested, had never taken the oath of allegiance to 
the Protestant king who in the oath had to be 
recognized as supreme head of the Church. "What 
church dost thou belong to?" Fox asked him. 

112 



THREE YEARS IN CASTLES 1 13 

"Where wast thou in Oliver's days and what didst 
thou do then for King Charles ?" 

The oath was tendered to Fox and he simply 
declared that he could take no oath. The justices 
dismissed him, only making him promise to come 
to the next court sessions in Lancaster. Mean- 
time he was allowed to return to Swarthmore 
Hall. When the court sessions came in January, 
1664, Fox appeared, according to his promise, 
at Lancaster, and stood before the court with his 
hat on his head and said, "Peace be among you." 
There was much discussion about his hat, but 
finally he was allowed to wear it unmolested. Once 
more the justices examined him about a possible 
plot, but found no evidence. Then, having no 
other way to condemn him, they tendered the 
oath again. Fox answered: "I cannot take any 
oath at all because Christ and the apostles have 
forbidden it. I have never taken an oath in my 
life." Whereupon he was committed to prison 
"for refusing to swear." He was kept in confine- 
ment in Lancaster Castle until the court assizes, 
three months later. 

At the assizes in March, 1664, he was asked 
again if he would take the oath of allegiance and 
once more he stated his reasons with directness 
and force, but refused. The discussions with 
the justices were very amusing and showed Fox's 
skill in handling his case, but whenever he got 



1 14 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

them in a close place they would retort, "Will you 
take the oath?" At length he was re-committed 
to his prison until the next assizes. At the same 
time Margaret Fell, for the same reason, was im- 
prisoned in Lancaster jail. At the August as- 
sizes, Fox once more was brought into court. 
The oath was again tendered, and again refused. 
The jury, because of Fox's refusal to take the oath, 
found him guilty, and while waiting for his sen- 
tence, he requested that the judge should send 
some one to see the vile prison in which he was 
being kept. Some of the justices, with Colonel 
Kirkby, went to look at the prison-dungeon. 
"When they came," Fox says, "they hardly durst 
go in, the floor was so bad and dangerous and the 
place was so open to wind and rain. Some that 
came up said, 'Sure it was a jakes-house." 

The next day Fox skillfully showed that the 
writ of indictment under which he was being 
sentenced was full of errors. The court admitted 
it, and Fox would have escaped sentence had not 
the judge decided to hold him again by the de- 
mand for an oath. Fox says: "I looked him in 
the face and the witness of God started up in him 
and made him blush when he looked at me, for 
he saw that I saw him." He was commanded 
back to his dungeon until the next assizes, the 
order to the jailer being that he should have close 
solitary confinement. 



THREE YEARS IN CASTLES II5 

"Then," Fox says, "I was put into a tower, 
where the smoke of the other prisoners came 
up so thick, that it stood as dew upon the walls, 
and sometimes it was so thick that I could hardly 
see the candle when it burned; and I being locked 
under three locks, the under-jailer, when the smoke 
was great, would hardly be persuaded to come 
up to unlock one of the uppermost doors, for 
fear of the smoke, so that I was almost smothered. 
Besides, it rained in upon my bed, and many times, 
when I went to stop out the rain in the cold 
winter season, my shirt was wet through with 
the rain that came in upon me, while I was labor- 
ing to stop it out. And the place being high and 
open to the wind, sometimes as fast as I stopped 
it, the wind blew it out again. In this manner 
did I lie, all that long cold winter, till the next 
assize; in which time I was so starved with cold 
and rain, that my body was greatly swelled, and 
my limbs much benumbed. " 

At the March assizes in 1665, he went through 
the same sort of absurd trial again. Once more 
he found serious errors in the indictment, but 
was instantly held up by the call for an oath, 
which he could not take. In a moment of anger the 
judge ordered him removed from court and then 
sentence was pronounced on him in his absence 
which was contrary to the law. It was a terrible 
sentence of praemunire. This was an ancient 



Il6 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

penalty contrived first by the Plantagenet kings 
for dealing with persons whom they wished to 
destroy. It had been revived in the period of the 
Reformation for disposing of persons who held a 
form of religion not in conformity with the ruling 
power. Now, under Charles II., it was brought in 
again , to overwhelm those who refused the oath 
of allegiance and supremacy. By the penalty of 
prcemunire the person sentenced was made an 
outlaw, had all his property confiscated, and was 
subject to perpetual imprisonment, or until the 
king issued a pardon. It was now pronounced 
on both George Fox and Margaret Fell, though 
the former being absent from court did not know 
what a terrible sentence had been passed upon him. 
Fourteen months had passed since his arrest. 
He had spent mos.t of the time in an appalling 
dungeon. He was guilty of no crime. He was 
pure in heart, innocent of all plots, loyal to the 
king, and punished only because he could not do 
what he believed the very Bible, on which he 
was asked to swear, told him not to do. He grew 
very weak and worn from his close confinement 
under such unsanitary conditions, but still he 
worked on with his pen and issued many papers 
and tracts from his castle-dungeon. Colonel 
Kirkby and the other justices were eager to get 
rid of him and wanted him removed from their 
jurisdiction. There was talk of sending him 



THREE YEARS IN CASTLES 117 

"beyond seas," but finally an order was secured 
to transfer him to a remote castle in another part 
of England. He was brought out of his confine- 
ment one day in April, 1665, without knowing 
his destination. He was too weak to walk. He 
was carried by the men and placed on horseback 
and hurried away through the gazing crowds of 
Lancaster. It was a strange journey across Eng- 
land. A white, haggard man, in filthy, ill-smelling 
clothes, on a horse, which "the wicked jailer" 
would occasionally whip to make him skip and 
leap, riding from a castle in Lancaster to his new 
castle by the sea, in Scarborough. There was an 
escort of soldiers riding beside him, for there was 
"a great fear" that the prisoner might try to 
escape or be rescued by his dangerous friends! 
At length, fainting and exhausted, Fox reached 
his castle by the sea, and found himself once more 
in a prison cell where the rain came in upon him, 
and which, like the old one in Lancaster, "smoked 
exceedingly and was very offensive." In fact 
the smoke was so thick in the little room that 
Fox playfully told Sir Jordan Crosslands, the 
governor of the castle, who was a Roman Catholic, 
that he had lodged his prisoner in a kind of pur- 
gatory here on earth. 

Fox spent fifty shillings to improve his cell, 
to stop the rain from coming in and to keep the 
smoke out, and he had succeeded in getting the 



Il8 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

place more decent for habitation when he was 
unexpectedly moved to another room, which 
turned out to be worse than his original one had 
been. This new room was a terrible place for a 
weak, ill, prison-worn man to live in. His own 
description of it is very graphic and will make the 
reader vividly realize the kind of life the poor, 
long-suffering man had in this famous j castle: 
"When I had been at that charge, and made 
it somewhat tolerable, they removed me into a 
worse room, where I had neither chimney nor 
fire-hearth. This being to the sea-side and lying 
much open, the wind drove in the rain forcibly, 
so that the water came over my bed, and ran about 
the room, that I was fain to skim it up with a 
platter. And when my clothes were wet, I had 
no fire to dry them; so that my body was benumbed 
with cold, and my fingers swelled, that one was 
grown as big as two. Though I was at some charge 
in this room also, I could not keep out the wind 
and rain. Besides they would suffer few Friends 
to come to me, and many times not any, no, not 
so much as to bring me a little food; but I was 
forced for the first quarter to hire one, not a 
Friend, to bring me necessaries. Sometimes the 
soldiers would take it from her, and she would 
scuffle with them for it. Afterwards I hired a 
soldier to bring me water and bread, and something 
to make a fire of, when I was in a room where a 



THREE YEARS IN CASTLES 1 19 

fire could be made. Commonly a threepenny 
loaf served me three weeks, and sometimes longer, 
and most of my drink was water with wormwood 
steeped or bruised in it. . . . Inasmuch as they 
kept me so very strait, not giving liberty for 
Friends to come to me, I spoke to the keepers 
of the castle to this effect: 'I did not know till 
I was removed from Lancaster castle, and brought 
prisoner to this castle of Scarbro, that I was con- 
victed of a praemunire; for the judge did not 
give sentence upon me at the assizes in open court. 
But seeing I am now a prisoner here, if I may not 
have my liberty, let my friends and acquaintances 
have 'their liberty to come and visit me, as Paul's 
friends had among the Romans, who were not 
Christians but Heathens. For Paul's friends 
had their liberty; all that would, might come to 
him, and he had his liberty to preach to them in 
his hired house; but I cannot have liberty to go 
into the town, nor for my friends to come to me 
here. So you that go under the name of Christians, 
are worse in this respect than those Heathens 
were.'" 

Although the officials of the castle would not 
allow any Friends to visit the prisoner and he 
was as "a man buried alive," they did permit 
other people to come and either gaze upon him 
or dispute with him. A number of Roman Cath- 
olics, who were friends of the governor, came, 



120 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

out of curiosity, to discuss religion with him and he 
showed considerable skill and humor in his keen 
questions and answers with them. It must have 
been a great relief and refreshment to be able to 
use his pent up mind on these subjects which in- 
terested him more than anything else in the world 
did. He also had debates with Presbyterians, 
with knights, noble ladies, priests and laymen, 
and these visits not only broke the dreary monot- 
ony of his prison life; they enabled him to feel 
that, like St. Paul in Rome, he was spreading his 
truth, even while he suffered for it. 

One of the most interesting of all his visitors 
was Dr. Cradock, who brought with him three 
clergymen and a titled lady. They debated at 
length about the taking of oaths, going over the 
usual Bible texts for argument. Then Fox turned 
the tables on the divinity doctor by asking him 
why his church was now excommunicating Friends 
when it had done nothing to minister to the spirit- 
ual condition of England at the time when Friends 
arose. "We might have turned Turks or Jews," 
Fox told him, "for any help we had from you." 
"Now," he added, "you have put us out of your 
church before you have got us into it and before 
you taught us to know your principles!" 

At first Sir Jordan Crosslands had taken little 
interest in his Quaker prisoner, but in the course 
of time he came to realize what an unusual inmate 



THREE YEARS IN CASTLES 121 

of his castle George Fox really was. Meantime 
some trouble came upon the governor of the 
castle which made him more serious and, Fox says, 
"more friendly/' During the earlier period of 
the imprisonment at Scarborough the officers 
tried to scare Fox with dire threats. They told 
him that he was likely soon to be "hanged over 
the wall." The deputy-governor informed him 
that the king was holding him at Scarborough as 
a hostage, and that if there should be any popular 
uprising anywhere in the nation, Fox was to be 
"hung over the wall to keep the people down." 
On one particular occasion, when a marriage was 
being performed at Scarborough by Roman Cath- 
olic ceremony, the prison officials intimated to 
Fox that this would probably be a good time to 
have his hanging come off. "I am all ready for 
it," was the brave man's answer. "I have never 
feared death nor suffering in my life. I am an 
innocent, peaceable man, free from all plots and 
uprisings. I have always sought the good of all 
men. Bring out your gallows. " 

But during the last period of the imprisonment 
the governor grew kinder and more tender. He 
discovered the spirit of Fox and was ready to 
help him to get his freedom. He was a Member of 
Parliament and on one of his visits to London he 
spoke to "Esquire Marsh," of whom we have heard 
before, and told him how Fox was held all these 



122 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

years in prison. "I would go a hundred miles 
barefoot to secure his liberty," was "Marsh's" en- 
thusiastic response. Affairs, however, moved 
slowly. England was at war with Holland, and 
it is always easy to forget and overlook a lone man 
far away in a prison. But Fox's Friends in London 
did not forget him. Two of them, who had public 
influence, drew up an account of what he had 
suffered in his two castle imprisonments and car- 
ried the report to "Esquire Marsh," who took it to 
"the master of requests." The latter procured 
from the king an order to release Fox from his 
castle prison. The order declared that the king 
was convinced that George Fox was "a man 
principled against plotting and fighting," and was 
always more ready to discover plots than to make 
them, and that, therefore, it was the royal pleasure 
that he should be set free. As soon as the order 
was brought by a devoted Friend to Sir Jordan 
Crosslands he issued the following passport: 
"Permit the bearer hereof, George Fox, late a 
prisoner here, and now discharged by His Majes- 
ty's order, quietly to pass about his lawful occa- 
sions, without any molestation." 

The discharge was dated September 1st, 1666, 
and closed an imprisonment which had begun 
January nth, 1664, so that lt l^ked about three 
months of being three years long. The feeling 
of the castle governor toward his charge was 



THREE YEARS IN CASTLES 1 23 

kind and friendly and Fox had come to respect 
his knightly keeper. He proposed to make a 
present to Sir Jordan, but the latter refused to 
receive anything, saying: "I will do you and 
your friends all the good I can, and I will never 
do you any hurt." "He continued loving," 
Fox says, "to his dying day." The officers of the 
castle, too, had felt the spirit and power of the 
man under their care and formed a high opinion 
of him. "He was as stiff as a tree," they said, 
"and as pure as a bell; for we could never bow 
him." 



CHAPTER XIII 

UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED 

While George Fox was standing the universe 
in Scarborough castle, London was suffering from 
a fearful plague that carried away a large part of 
the population, and the day after he was released 
from his prison the great fire of 1666 swept over 
the city, destroying thirteen thousand houses. Fox 
believed that he had foreseen this calamity. "As 
I was walking in my chamber " [apparently while 
he was in Lancaster castle], he says, "with my 
eye to the Lord, I saw the angel of the Lord with 
a glittering drawn sword stretched southward, 
as though the court had been all on fire." 

As soon as he was once more a free man he set 
out immediately on a strenuous religious tour 
of the counties, having everywhere "large and 
blessed meetings." But though he seemed to 
have abnormal strength for a person who had 
just had three years of dungeon life, he was, 
nevertheless, now an aged and somewhat broken 
man. In years he was only forty-two and he had 
still almost twenty-four years of life before him, 
but the awful prisons had left their mark upon his 
body and he never again possessed the iron con- 

124 



UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED I2£ 

stitution which was his before the jails had wasted 
him. "My joints and my body/' he writes after 
quite a period of travel, "were so stiff and be- 
numbed that I could hardly get on my horse or 
bend my joints; nor could I well bear to be near 
the fire or eat warm meat, I had been kept so 
long from it." A few years later he passed through 
a long and serious illness at Enfield, from which 
his friends never expected to see him recover, 
and on his voyage to America he was desperately 
ill. He says of this illness: "The many hurts 
and bruises I had formerly received, and the in- 
firmities I had contracted in England by extreme 
cold and hardships that I had undergone in many 
long and sore imprisonments, returned upon me 
at sea." He had also a long period of great ill- 
ness and physical weakness after landing in Bar- 
badoes, "with much pain," he says, "in my bones, 
joints and my whole body, so that I could hardly 
get any rest." But his unconquerable spirit 
dominated his body and in spite of his bruises 
and weaknesses he made it go on serving his 
strong will and purpose. 

In this later period of his ministry Fox was re- 
warded by the convincement of some remarkable 
men who brought new distinction and power to 
the Society which he had founded. The most 
famous of them all was William Penn, the son of 
Admiral Penn. As the founder of the great middle 



126 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

colony and state which now bears his name, he 
has won a place of marked distinction in American 
history. His life is full of romance and daring 
as well as suffering, and he will always be cele- 
brated for his defense of personal liberty at home 
and for his ''holy experiment " in the Western 
colony. Robert Barclay of Scotland was another 
shining light in the Quaker group. Scholar and 
saint, he brought gifts which no other Friends 
possessed and it fell to his lot to write the great 
defense of the Quaker faith which every Friend 
read for two centuries, Barclay's Apology. Isaac 
Penington, mystic and saint, beautiful soul and 
gifted writer, was won to the cause before Fox 
went to his two castles. At Swannington meeting 
in 1658 he found God and felt the healing drop 
into his soul from under God's wings, and from 
that time until his death he used his pen and tongue 
to advance the truth which his own soul had dis- 
covered. Thomas Ellwood, John Milton's secre- 
tary, another highly gifted man, at great sacri- 
fice, threw in his lot with the followers of Fox in 
1660. Like their leader, they all suffered for their 
faith and they all gave the best they had in them 
for the truth which their souls had found. 

During the long silent stretches of his imprison- 
ment Fox had evidently been meditating deeply 
and thinking much of the future of the Society 
which had grown up so rapidly under his preach- 



UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED 1 27 

ing. There were many signs of weakness in it and 
lack of organization. He came out of prison with 
a resolve to prepare the Society for its great tasks 
in the world and to organize it more thoroughly 
while he was still with his Friends and had the 
strength and freedom to do it. He found Friends 
who were careless and disorderly and he felt that 
much more oversight of the members was needed. 
He recommended that monthly meetings should 
be established to take care of those who were 
poor and in need; to look after those who were 
suffering for their faith; to keep records of births 
and deaths and marriages and to have a careful 
oversight over the lives of the membership. There 
were some Friends who stoutly disapproved of so 
much system and method. They wanted every- 
thing left free for the individuals to decide accord- 
ing to their own light. These opposers of regula- 
tion and discipline gave Fox a vast amount of 
trouble and anxiety. He could stand persecution 
and he could face the mob and the prison, but it 
was much harder to endure the attacks and com- 
plaints and criticisms of his own followers. The 
rest of his life was to be largely occupied with 
this great work of organization and with smooth- 
ing differences and with bringing order out of 
chaos and disorder. It is not so interesting to 
read about as the victorious early campaigns 
through the counties, but it took even more pa- 



128 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

tience and grace and wisdom, and it revealed in a 
new way the greatness of George Fox as a leader. 
He saw, too, at this time, the great importance of 
education and the training of the mind. He now 
advised the establishment of schools for boys and 
girls, who were to be taught "whatsoever things 
were civil and useful in the creation"! 

After a successful religious journey in Ireland, 
where he had "large and precious meetings," 
and where he gathered "a good, weighty and true 
people, sensible of the power of the Lord God 
and tender of His truth," he took one of the most 
interesting steps of his life. He joined himself 
in marriage with his dear friend and helper, 
Margaret Fell. She had been imprisoned at Lan- 
caster with George Fox and after fourteen months 
of jail she had been sentenced under the statute of 
prcemunire in 1665, and her imprisonment had 
lasted, with possibly slight breaks of freedom, 
until June, 1668. Even then, though temporarily 
released, the sentence still hung over her and made 
her a prison victim for yet many more years. 
While Fox was in Ireland she was using her joy- 
ous freedom in visiting the prisons where other 
Friends through the nation were suffering. She 
had taken her youngest daughter, Rachel, to 
the new girls' school at Shacklewell to learn every- 
thing "useful in the creation" and she was on a 
visit to her daughter Isabel who had married 



UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED 1 29 

William Yeamans of Bristol. Here in Bristol 
George Fox found her and won her as his true and 
loyal wife. His own account of how it happened 
is quaint and charming. He says: 

"I had seen from the Lord a considerable time 
before, that I should take Margaret Fell to be my 
wife. And when I first mentioned it to her, she 
felt the answer of Life from God thereunto. But 
though the Lord had opened this thing to me, yet 
I had not received a command from the Lord, for 
the accomplishment of it then. Wherefore I let 
the thing rest, and went on in the work and service 
of the Lord as before, according as he led me; 
travelling up and down in this nation and through 
Ireland. But now being at Bristol, and finding 
Margaret Fell there, it opened in me from the 
Lord that the thing should be accomplished. 
After we had discoursed the matter together, I 
told her, if she also was satisfied with the ac- 
complishment of it now, she should first send for 
her children; which she did. When the rest of 
her daughters were come, I asked both them and 
her sons in law, if they had anything against it, 
or for it; and they all severally expressed their 
satisfaction therein. Then I asked Margaret, 
if she had fulfilled and performed her husband's 
will to her children. She replied, "the children 
knew that." Whereupon I asked them, whether, 
if their mother married, they should not lose by 



I30 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

it. And I asked Margaret, whether she had done 
anything in lieu of it, which might answer it to 
the children ? [All of which means, in plain Eng- 
lish, that she had made arrangements and pro- 
vision so that her children would not lose any of 
their rightful property if their mother married 
George Fox.] The children said, that she had 
answered it to them, and desired me to speak no 
more of it. I told them I was plain and would 
have all things done plainly; for I sought not any 
outward advantage to myself. So after I had thus 
acquainted the children with it, our intention of 
marriage was laid before Friends, both privately 
and publicly, to their full satisfaction, many of 
whom gave testimony thereunto that it was of 
God. Afterwards, a meeting being appointed for 
the accomplishment thereof, in the meetinghouse 
at Broad-Mead in Bristol, we took each other, the 
Lord joining us together in the honourable mar- 
riage, in the everlasting covenant and immortal 
Seed of life. In the sense whereof, living and 
weighty testimonies were borne thereunto by 
Friends, in the movings of the heavenly power 
which united us together. Then was a certificate 
relating both to the proceedings and the mar- 
riage, openly read, and signed by the relations, and 
by most of the ancient Friends of that city, besides 
many others from divers parts of the nation. " 
This marriage, which they both believed was 



UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED I3I 

"in the immortal Seed of life" — i. e., according to 
the divine will and in unity with the eternal spirit 
of Jesus Christ — proved to be a very beautiful 
and happy one. For some years after they were 
thus united George Fox and his wife saw almost 
nothing of one another, but they were very closely 
joined together in sincere love through all this 
period of hard separation. Fox wrote many letters 
to his wife. They are brief, quaint, odd love let- 
ters, but they have the deep, true note of real affec- 
tion. They generally begin : " My dear Heart in the 
Truth and Life that changeth not," and they close 
with some such phrase as this: "So no more, but 
my love in the Seed and Life that changeth not." 

The reason they were so much separated was 
that Margaret Fox was taken back to prison 
almost at once after the marriage was accom- 
plished and Fox not very much later took an ex- 
tensive journey overseas. They had a week to- 
gether in Bristol after they were united "in the 
immortal Seed of Life." After they traveled 
together a short distance they took leave of 
one another and parted to their "several serv- 
ices." "Margaret returned homewards to the 
north," Fox says, "and I passed on in the work 
of the Lord as before" — a week was all he could 
spare of the precious time which belonged to the 
Lord's work. Fox had expected to join his wife 
in Leicestershire — perhaps at his old home at 



I32 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

Fenny Drayton — but instead of coming south 
to meet him, as he asked her to do, she was "haled 
out of her house to Lancaster prison again, by 
an order obtained from the king and council, to 
fetch her back to prison upon the ol&prcemunire" 
It looks as though Margaret Fox's son George, 
who was strongly opposed to the marriage with 
George Fox, may have had something to do with 
bringing about the arrest and reimprisonment of 
his mother under the prcemunire. He did not share 
his sisters' love of Fox and he plainly plotted in 
London to bring the husband and wife into trouble. 
Fox wrote, "I am informed he [George Fell] hath 
been with Kirkby, Monk and such-like persons; 
and I understand his intent is to have Swarth- 
more. . . . The agreement thou made with him, 
he says, signifies nothing, thou being a prisoner." 
In any case, whether by unnatural intrigue, or 
through general opposition to the Quakers, this 
good woman, now fifty-five years old, almost im- 
mediately after her marriage, was hurried away 
from home to prison, where she was lodged from 
March, 1670, to April, 1671. 

The Conventicle Act was renewed in 1670 with 
fresh vigor and the danger of arrest was greatly 
increased. This period was one of intense suffer- 
ing for Friends and they never knew when they 
went to meeting on Sunday morning — "First- 
day," they called it — whether they would come 



UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED 1 33 

back again to their homes, or whether, as was more 
likely, they would be arrested and dragged away 
to prison, perhaps never to come home again. The 
Sunday after the new Act came into force Fox 
says: "I went to Grace-Church Street [meeting] 
where I expected the storm was most likely to 
begin." While Fox was preaching in the meeting, 
the constable with his soldiers came and pulled 
him down as he said, "Blessed are the peace- 
makers. " He was put in charge of the soldiers 
and the officer said to him, "You are the man I 
was looking for." After an examination Fox and 
the Friends who had been arrested with him were 
set at liberty. His Friends asked him where he 
was going now: "Why," he said, "I am going 
back to the meeting," and sure enough he went 
straight to Grace-Church Street! The meeting 
was already over and Fox went out to discover 
how the day had gone. "A glorious time it was," 
he says, "for the Lord's power came over all, and 
His everlasting truth got renown." The account 
continues: "As fast as some that w r ere speaking 
were taken down [by the officers] others were 
moved of the Lord to stand up and speak; to 
the admiration of the people." 

Under the strain of this great persecution upon 
his followers, Fox had a serious return of his old 
nervous troubles. "A great weight and oppres- 
sion," he says, "fell upon my spirit." "I was 



134 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

hardly able to ride upon my horse." "I was much 
spent, being so extremely laden and burdened 
with the world's spirits, that my life was oppressed 
under them." "I lay exceeding weak, and at 
last lost both hearing and sight." "Under great 
sufferings and travails, sorrows and oppressions, 
I lay several weeks, whereby I was brought so 
low and weak in body that few thought I could 
live." Gradually life and health and strength 
came back to him. At first he "recovered a little 
glimmering sight" and then, little by little, both 
sight and hearing returned and finally "the 
Lord's power," he says, "upheld me and enabled 
me to declare His eternal word of Life." 

One of the first things he did after his recovery 
was to take up measures to secure the release of 
his wife from prison. He sent Martha Fisher and 
another woman to King Charles II. to plead for 
Margaret Fox's liberty. "They went in faith 
and in the Lord's power," Fox says, and they were 
successful. The king granted a discharge under 
his broad seal and cleared her and her estate from 
the prcemunire. 

Meantime Fox felt it "laid upon him by the 
Lord to go beyond seas to visit America." He 
wrote to his wife — his "dear Heart"— that she 
was at last a free woman and that she should 
"hasten to London," to see him off for America, 
"because the ship was then fitting for the voyage." 



UNITED IN THE IMMORTAL SEED I35 

The ship was a yacht named the Industry, Ac- 
companied by his wife and several Friends he 
went to Gravesend, on the 12th of August, 1671, 
to go forth on his momentous journey. A large 
group of Friends were to go with him to America 
as companions in the ministry. They were Wil- 
liam Edmundson, Thomas Briggs, John Rous, 
John Stubbs, Solomon Eccles, James Lancaster, 
John Cartwright, Robert Widders, George Pat- 
tison, John Hull, Elizabeth Hooton and Elizabeth 
Miers. One wonders why Margaret Fox did not 
go too, but no doubt there was good reason why 
she remained behind in England. She went on 
with him as far as Deal, where they separated not 
to meet again for many months and even years. 

The ship was a leaky craft so that both seamen 
and passengers, of whom there were fifty, had to 
man the pumps both day and night. One day, 
we hope it was the worst one, she sucked in sixteen 
inches of water in two hours' time. They had a 
very close escape from a "Sallee man of war," 
that is a Moorish pirate ship, and Fox always 
thought that the escape was a miraculous deliver- 
ance. He himself, as has already been said, was 
desperately ill on the voyage, though he did not 
suffer at all from seasickness. The passage took 
seven weeks, and, late in the evening of September 
third, the party landed on the island of Barbadoes 
with Fox still a very ill man. 



CHAPTER XIV 

VISITING THE "SEED" IN AMERICA 

It seems likely that George Fox had an attack 
of what would now be called rheumatic fever on 
the ship and during the early period of his stay 
in Barbadoes. There was much work to be done 
in the island but he could do very little. He could 
neither walk nor ride. The wickedness on the 
island depressed him and lay "as a weight and 
load" upon him. Gradually he began to recover 
and the fervor and energy of his spirit returned. 
He visited the governor of the island to whom he 
afterwards wrote a famous letter, explaining and 
interpreting his religious faith. Large meetings 
were held and many lives were reached with the 
message of Fox and his Friends. 

After three months of activity in Barbadoes 
he crossed over to Jamaica and had much success- 
ful service in the great land that Oliver Cromwell 
had recently added to the colonial possessions of 
England. Here Elizabeth Hooton died, departing 
"in peace like a lamb, bearing testimony to truth 
at her departure." Seven weeks were spent in 
Jamaica and then Fox sailed, with most of his 
group of companions, for Maryland. It proved 

136 



VISITING THE "SEED" IN AMERICA I37 

to be a very difficult, slow and dangerous passage. 
The ship often seemed ready to sink and the tack- 
ling was stripped off by the awful violence of the 
storm. It took over six weeks to make the passage 
from Jamaica to the coast of Maryland, and when 
they entered Patuxent River, safe and sound, 
they praised the Lord "whose power hath do- 
minion over all, whom the winds and the seas 
obey." 

John Burnyeat, a remarkable Quaker apostle, 
who traveled extensively among the American 
Friends, had preceded Fox to Maryland and had 
appointed a general meeting for Friends in that 
colony. It began just as the party from Jamaica 
arrived. Great throngs of people came to it, 
"some of considerable quality in the world's 
account," and the meeting lasted four days. 
Fox was now in pretty good health and vigor. 
Travel by boat and horseback was hard and tax- 
ing, but he stood it finely. "Blessed be the Lord," 
he says, "I was preserved from taking hurt." 
Everywhere he went in America one of his first 
interests was to visit the Indians and to give his 
message to them. "It was upon me from the 
Lord," he says, "to send to the Indian emperor 
and his kings to come to the meeting. The em- 
peror [head chief] came and was at it; but his 
kings, lying further off, could not reach in time; 
yet they came after with their cockarooses [i. e., 



I38 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

head men]. I had in the evening two good op- 
portunities with them; they heard the word of the 
Lord willingly and confessed to it. They carried 
themselves very courteously and lovingly/* 

Having pretty well covered the Maryland ter- 
ritory, Fox started off northward on a hard and 
difficult journey to New England. It was made 
on horseback and by boats, most of the way being 
through thick forests. The crossing of the Del- 
aware was attended with "great danger." They 
had Indian guides who could generally speak 
a little English and were "very loving." New 
Jersey was a wilderness country, where, Fox says, 
"we travelled a whole day together without 
seeing man or woman, house or dwelling-place." 

A great meeting, called the Half Year's Meeting, 
was about to be held at this time at Oyster Bay, 
on Long Island, where there were many Friends. 
Fox attended this meeting, which lasted four 
days, like the one in Maryland, and it was "of 
great service to the truth." Having traversed 
Long Island he sailed for Newport where he pro- 
posed to attend the New England Yearly Meeting. 
Friends came to this meeting from all parts of 
New England, from as far east as Dover, in the 
colony of New Hampshire. Newport itself was 
a great Quaker center. Nicholas Easton, a prom- 
inent Quaker, the founder of Newport, was then 
governor of Rhode Island. George Fox stayed at 



VISITING THE "SEED" IN AMERICA I39 

his house, though we may be pretty sure that he 
had to visit many other homes besides in this 
famous Quaker city. The Yearly Meeting lasted 
six days and was attended by multitudes of 
Friends and others. When it was over the people 
were so moved and stirred that they found it 
almost impossible to separate. Fox says: "It 
was hard for Friends to part; for the glorious 
power of the Lord, which was over all, and His 
blessed truth and life flowing amongst them, had 
so knit and united them together, that they spent 
two days in taking leave one of another, and of 
the Friends of the island; and then, being mightily 
filled with the presence and power of the Lord 
they went away, with joyful hearts, to their 
various habitations, in the several colonies where 
they lived." Later, after the great meeting was 
over and the Friends had separated, Fox visited 
Providence where Roger Williams, the founder 
of the colony, lived. He believed in liberty and 
he had done much to establish freedom of thought, 
but he did not approve of Fox and he did not like 
the ideas of the Quakers. For some reason he 
did not come to the meeting to dispute with Fox, 
as everybody expected he would do. But after 
Fox had held his great meeting in Providence and 
had left the colony, Roger Williams rowed in his 
boat all the way to Newport, thirty miles, to 
debate with him ! Afterwards, when he found that 



I4O THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

Fox was gone, he wrote a book against him, which 
he called George Fox Digged Out of His Bur- 
roweSy and Fox answered it with another book 
which he called The New England Firebrand 
Quenched. 

It is difficult to tell why George Fox did not 
visit the other New England colonies. There 
were many large meetings of Friends in Mas- 
sachusetts and along the Piscataqua River in 
New Hampshire. John Burnyeat and some of 
the other travelers went to these eastern meetings, 
but Fox saw only the Rhode Island meetings. 
It is not possible to suppose that he was afraid 
of the magistrates in Boston. It would have 
been the first time in his life that he was ever 
afraid of anybody. He appears to have felt that 
he was more needed in the southern colonies and 
that his companions could do the necessary work 
in the other parts of New England. While he 
was visiting Narraganset, where the people were 
"mightily affected" by his preaching, he heard 
that some of the magistrates said among them- 
selves, that if they had money enough they would 
hire him to be their minister. As soon as George 
Fox heard this remark reported he said: "It is 
time for me to be gone; for if their eye is so much 
to me, or to any of us, they will not discover their 
own true Teacher. " Whereupon he started back 
toward the south. 



VISITING THE "SEED" IN AMERICA I4I 

He had a very rough and stormy journey along 
the Sound to Oyster Bay. From there he went 
to Flushing, where, under the famous oak trees, 
he had "a glorious heavenly meeting/' Then 
he hired a sloop; and, the wind serving, "set out 
for the New Country, now called Jersey. " He 
sailed to Middletown Harbor and then rode thirty 
miles, "through woods and bad bogs, one worse 
than all the rest — a place which the people of the 
country called Purgatory. " On this rough journey 
across New Jersey an accident befell one of the 
travelers, the account of which is graphically 
given in the Journal: "John Jay, a Friend of 
Barbadoes, who came with us from Rhode Island 
and intended to accompany us through the woods 
of Maryland, being to try a horse, got upon his 
back; and the horse fell a-running, and cast him 
down upon his head, and broke his neck, as the 
people said. They that were near him took him 
up as dead, carried him a good way, and laid him 
on a tree. I got to him as soon as I could; and 
feeling him, concluded he was dead. As I stood 
by him, pitying him and his family, I took hold 
of his hair, and his head turned any way, his 
neck was so limber. Whereupon. I took his head 
in both my hands, and setting my knees against 
the tree, I raised his head, and perceived there 
was nothing out or broken that way. Then I 
put one hand under his chin, and the other behind 



I42 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

his head, and raised his head two or three times 
with all my strength, and brought it in. I soon 
perceived his neck began to grow stiff again, and 
then he began to rattle in the throat, and quickly 
after to breathe. The people were amazed; but 
I bid them have a good heart, be of good faith 
and carry him into the house. They did so and 
set him by the fire. I bid them get him something 
warm to drink, and put him to bed. After he 
had been in the house a while he began to speak; 
but he did not know where he had been. The 
next day we passed away (and he with us, pretty 
well) about sixteen miles to a meeting at Middle- 
town, through woods and bogs, and over a river; 
where we swam our horses, and got over ourselves 
upon a hollow tree. Many hundred miles did 
he travel with us after this. To this meeting came 
most of the people of the town. A glorious meet- 
ing we had, and the Truth was over all; blessed 
be the great Lord God for ever!" 

It is not necessary to suppose that there was 
anything miraculous about this cure. It shows, 
however, a striking trait in the character of 
George Fox. He always knows how to meet 
emergencies. He is ready for any kind of crisis. 
While the others stand around and weep over a 
dying companion, he steps in and acts. He does 
the wisest and best thing he knows of to do under 
the circumstances. He has a faith and confidence 



VISITING THE "SEED" IN AMERICA I43 

which count for much. His dear friend William 
Penn, who traveled much with him, "by night 
and by day, by sea and by land/' says: "I 
never saw him out of his place, or not a match 
for every service or occasion. " On the return 
journey from the northern colonies to the southern 
Fox traveled through a long section of what is 
now Pennsylvania. He crossed the Delaware 
not far from the place where Burlington, New 
Jersey, is now located, and traversed "the woods 
on the other side of Delaware Bay." 

It is more than likely that this journey had an 
important historical influence both on the later 
settlement of New Jersey and on the building of 
the great Quaker colony on the western shores 
of the Delaware. He visited William Penn, at 
Rickmansworth, almost as soon as he was back 
again in England, and among the many things 
they talked about, we may be sure one subject 
was the possibility of transferring the persecuted 
and suffering Friends in England and Wales to 
the safe haven of refuge in these virgin forests 
along the two sides of the Delaware River. 

It proved to be no easy task to cross the creeks 
and rivers which flow into the Delaware. One 
of these Fox calls "a desperate river," which was 
" hazardous to us and our horses. " The Christiana 
River was also hard to cross. The party of Friends 
went over in Indian canoes, swimming their horses 



I44 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

behind. The main difficulty of the passage was 
climbing the steep and miry banks, where the 
horses nearly floundered. All along the journey 
the Indians received much attention from George 
Fox. They always "heard the truth attentively" 
and were 'Very loving," The goal of the return- 
ing journey for the present seems to have been 
Tred Haven on the Chesapeake. Here a great 
five days' meeting was held, to which everybody 
appears to have come, magistrates and their 
wives, persons of chief account in the country, 
Papists and Protestants. As many as a thousand 
people, in this new country, flocked to the meetings. 
"I went by boat," Fox says, "every day four or 
five miles to it, and there were so many boats at 
that time passing upon the river, that it was 
almost like the Thames. The people said, 'There 
were never so many boats seen there together 
before'; and one of the justices said, 'He never 
saw so many people together in that country 
before.'" . It was "a heavenly meeting," "Friends 
were sweetly refreshed, the people were satisfied 
and many were convinced." 

The effect of Fox's visit to Maryland was very 
marked on the general religious life of the colony. 
He stirred the entire country around the Ches- 
apeake to fresh life. He next went on further 
south to visit the scattered groups of Friends 
in Virginia, where he found "much openness" 



VISITING THE SEED IN AMERICA I45 

and where "truth spread," and then he set out 
for the Carolinas. The way was very difficult, 
through pathless forests, "plashy bogs and 
swamps/ y The travelers were often soaking wet 
and had to sleep uncovered in the woods. For 
a single night they had the shelter of a friendly 
house at Somerton, in southern Virginia, where 
they had the comfort of a house floor before an 
open fire and were waited upon by a woman who 
"had a sense of God." 

They sailed in a canoe down the Chowan River, 
then called the Macocomocock. After holding 
a "blessed meeting" with the people in that part 
of the country, the little party of travelers canoed 
the river Roanoke to Coney-Hoe Bay. Here they 
borrowed a boat, as the water splashed over their 
canoe, and they went to visit the governor of the 
colony. Fox's account is an interesting one. 
He says: "With this boat we went to the gov- 
ernor's house; but the water in some places was 
so shallow that the boat being laden, could not 
swim; so that we were fain to put off our shoes 
and stockings and wade through the water some 
distance. The governor, with his wife, received 
us lovingly; but a doctor there would needs dis- 
pute with us. And truly his opposing us was of 
good service, giving occasion for the opening of 
many things to the people, concerning the light 
and Spirit of God, which he denied to be in every 



I46 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

one; and affirmed that it was not in the Indians. 
Whereupon I called an Indian to us, and asked 
him, * Whether or not when he lied, or did wrong 
to any one, there was not something in him that 
reproved him for it?' He said, 'There was such 
a thing in him, that did so reprove him; and he 
was ashamed when he had done wrong, or spoken 
wrong/ So we shamed the doctor before the 
governor and the people; in so much that the 
poor man ran out so far, that at length he would 
not own the Scriptures. We tarried at the gov- 
ernor's that night; and next morning he very 
courteously walked with us himself about two 
miles through the woods, to a place whither he 
had sent our boat about to meet us. Taking leave 
of him, we entered our boat, and went that day 
about thirty miles to Joseph Scott's, one of the 
representatives of the country. There we had 
a sound, precious meeting; the people were tender, 
and much desired after meetings. Wherefore at 
a house about four miles further, we had another 
meeting, to which the governor's secretary came, 
who was chief secretary of the province, and had 
been formerly convinced. " 

The return journey was more difficult even than 
the southward journey had been, for the river 
currents were now all against the travelers. 
They lay night after night in their wet clothes 
until they reached Somerton, Virginia, where 



VISITING THE SEED IN AMERICA I47 

they had the joy of the open hearth fire in the 
home of the woman who had "a sense of God." 
For three succeeding weeks Fox visited Friends 
and meetings in Virginia and great power seems 
to have attended his preaching, — it "struck a 
dread and brought a reverence upon the people's 
minds.' ' 

Finally, Fox had a third and last great visit 
through the settlements of the Maryland colony. 
He had traveled two hundred miles from Nance- 
mond in Virginia, sailing along the coast in a small 
sailboat over which the waters often splashed, land- 
ing on the shore for the night, where he slept in his 
wet clothes before a fire of logs and where the wolves 
often howled about the fire. Fox himself often sat 
at the helm like a tried sailor and steered the boat. 
He arrived at Patuxent "very weary," but ready 
for another "precious meeting." This last tour of 
Maryland occurred in mid-winter and the weather 
was " bitterly cold." On his boat journeys to meet- 
ings, he was sometimes chilled to the bone and al- 
most lost the use of his hands, they were " so frozen 
and benumbed with the cold." It was, however, 
a time of renewed life and power. "The mighty 
presence of the Lord was seen and felt over all." 
A tide of life was raised throughout this entire 
region which lasted in force for many generations. 
In fact, this American visit of George Fox proved 
to be one of the greatest religious events in the 



I48 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

colonies during the seventeenth century. When 
the ship "Woodhouse" landed in Rhode Island 
"the irresistible word of the Lord" had come to 
one of the Quaker missionaries on the ship and 
he prophesied that "the Seed in America shall 
be as the sands of the sea in number." By "Seed" 
he meant the group of persons in America who 
should discover the Light of Christ and live by 
it and so form the Spiritual Church of the future. 
Wherever there was anybody ready to receive 
the truth and to spread it to others, there was 
already the "seed" of a new and purer society, 
the beginning of a better world. Well, George 
Fox came to visit this "seed" in America and to 
spread it into new places. When he had finished 
his work around the Chesapeake he felt that he 
was "clear/' that is, that he had done all he came 
to do in America, and with a free and joyous 
heart he sailed away for old England where more 
work and more sufferings and more love were 
awaiting him. The return passage was a wild 
and stormy one, the waves of the tempestuous 
sea rising around their little ship like mountains, 
but the wind blew in the right direction and car- 
ried them rapidly across to their homeland, and 
they arrived safely in Bristol, the 20th of June, 
1673, m r ecord speed time, refreshed in spirit 
and improved in health. 



CHAPTER XV 

IN WORCESTER JAIL 

As soon as George Fox arrived in England 
from his American journey and was hailed by his 
friends with great joy, he wrote the following 
glowing letter to his wife: 
"Dear Heart, 

"This day we came into Bristol near night, 
from the sea; glory to the Lord God over all for 
ever, who was our convoy and steered our course ! 
The God of the whole earth, of the seas and winds, 
who made the clouds his chariot, beyond all words, 
blessed be his name forever! He is over all in his 
great power and wisdom, Amen. Robert Widders 
and James Lancaster are with me, and we are 
well; glory to the Lord for ever, who hath carried 
us through many perils, perils by water, and in 
storms, perils by pirates and robbers, perils in the 
wilderness and amongst false professors! Praises 
to him whose glory is over all for ever, Amen! 
Therefore mind the fresh life, and live all to God 
in it. I intend (if the Lord will) to stay a while 
this away; it may be till the fair. So no more, 
but my love to all Friends." G. F. 

Margaret Fox hurried with all speed from 

149 



I50 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

Swarthmore to Bristol to meet her husband. 
Two of her daughters with their husbands, and 
William Penn and his wife, also came to share 
in the joyous greetings to the returned traveler 
who had faced the perils of sea and wilderness. 
A great public meeting was held in Bristol and 
"the Lord's infinite power" was felt to be "over 
all." Fox preached a memorable sermon on this 
occasion and the spirits of the entire group were 
uplifted. After visiting a number of communities 
and holding many "precious meetings," the party 
came to Rickmansworth, where they stopped for 
a visit with William Penn and where we may be- 
lieve there was much talk about America. 

As they proceeded northward, after a visit to 
London and to the Quaker schools for boys and 
girls, and came on through Oxfordshire, Fox had 
a strong intimation that a new prison experience 
was coming upon him. "As I was sitting at sup- 
per," he says, "I felt that I was taken, yet I said 
nothing then to any one about it." The next 
day after this inward warning came to him, Fox 
attended "a large and precious meeting" in a 
barn at Armscott in Worcestershire. The meeting 
passed off undisturbed. After Friends had gone 
home from the meeting Fox was sitting in a 
Friend's parlor talking to a group of Friends when 
suddenly a justice of the peace and a "priest" 
who was the informer, came to arrest him for 



IN WORCESTER JAIL 151 

having attended a meeting, against the Convent- 
icle Law. 1 They came too late to find the meeting 
still going on, because, Fox says, the priest had 
to delay his coming as it was the christening day 
for his child and he "stayed for the sprinkling. ,, 
But, though they thus had no real ground for 
the arrest, they seized Fox and his son-in-law 
Thomas Lower and took them away to Worcester 
Jail. It was naturally a terrible blow to Margaret 
Fox who had been separated from her husband 
almost all the time since they were married, and 
who was now hoping for quiet, happy days in 
Swarthmore Hall. Fox himself did not enjoy 
the prospect of another long prison experience; but 
he had learned to keep calm and to face whatever 
came to him in the course of his duty. He at 
once wrote this brave letter to his "Dear Heart": 
"Dear Heart, 
"Thou seemedst to be a little grieved when 
I was speaking of prisons, and when I was taken; 
be content with the will of the Lord God. For 
when I was at John Rous's at Kingston, I had 
a sight of my being taken prisoner, and when I 
was at Bray Doily's in Oxfordshire, as I sat at 
supper, I saw I was taken; and I saw I had a suffer- 
ing to undergo. But the Lord's power is over all; 
blessed be his holy name for ever!" 

1 In 1670, a new Conventicle Act, more drastic and severe, than 
the former one, had become a law. 



1^2 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

Thomas Lower had friends at court, his brother 
being the King's physician, and he might have 
been set free if he would have accepted his own 
freedom and consented to be separated from 
George Fox. This he would not do. He chose 
to remain and suffer with his father-in-law rather 
than to accept freedom alone. When the case 
came to trial at the Court Sessions and there 
appeared to be no evidence against Fox and his 
companion, the officials resorted to the old scheme 
of ensnaring the Quakers with the demand for 
an oath. The Judge said: "Mr. Fox, you are a 
famous man and for all we know you may be 
innocent, but we shall be better satisfied if you 
will take the oath of allegiance and supremacy." 
Then they read the oath and asked Fox if he would 
take it. "I told them, 'I never took an oath in 
my life, but I had always been true to the govern- 
ment; that I was cast into the dungeon at Derby, 
and kept a prisoner six months there, because I 
would not take up arms against King Charles 
at Worcester fight; and for going to meetings was 
carried up out of Leicestershire, and brought 
before Oliver Cromwell, as a plotter to bring in 
King Charles. And ye know/ said I, 'in your own 
consciences, that we, the people called Quakers, 
cannot take an oath, or swear in any case, be- 
cause Christ hath forbidden it. But as to the mat- 
ter or substance contained in the oaths, this I 



IN WORCESTER JAIL 1 53 

can and do say, that I do own and acknowledge 
the king of England to be the lawful heir and 
successor to the realm of England; and do abhor 
all plots and plotters, and contrivances against 
him; and I have nothing in my heart but love 
and good-will to him and all men, and desire his 
and their prosperity; the Lord knows it, before 
whom I stand, an innocent man. And as to the 
oath of supremacy, I deny the Pope, and his 
power, and his religion, and abhor it with my 
heart/ While I was speaking, they cried, 'give 
him the book;' and I said, 'the book saith, "Swear 
not at all/" Then they cried, 'take him away, 
jailer;' and I still speaking on, they were urgent 
upon the jailer, crying, 'take him away, we shall 
have a meeting here; why do you not take him 
away? that fellow (meaning the jailer) loves to 
hear him preach/ Then the jailer drew me away, 
and as I was turning from them, I stretched out 
my arm and said, ' the Lord forgive you who cast 
me into prison for obeying the doctrine of Christ/ 
Thus they apparently broke their promise in the 
face of the country; for they promised I should 
have free liberty to speak, but now they would 
not give it to me; and they promised they would 
not ensnare us, yet now they tendered me the 
oaths on purpose to ensnare me." 

Again Thomas Lower had an opportunity to 
go free, but he would not leave his father and 



154 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

stayed on in the prison. It was decided to send 
Fox up to London for trial and the under-sheriff 
appointed Thomas Lower as his deputy to escort 
the prisoner to London, so that these two men 
went off alone to the trial before the King's Bench, 
with the Chief Justice presiding. Fox was kindly 
and leniently treated, and allowed to lodge at a 
Friend's house while the trial was proceeding. 
Every effort was made to induce him to take an 
oath, but he was as immovable as a mountain. 
In the end he was sent back to Worcester Jail 
but was allowed to go his own way and at his own 
leisure, provided only that he should be there 
without fail for the April Court Assizes. He spent 
some time in London and then went by slow stages 
down to Worcester. He walked to the jail with- 
out any keeper and turned himself over to the 
authorities. He was put in charge of a boy eleven 
years old! 

Again, at the Sessions, the old question of the 
oath came up and was discussed at length. He 
declared himself ready to sign a paper approving 
of the King's government and setting forth his 
loyalty, but to take an oath he would not, even 
if he remained till doomsday in the prison. Once 
more the case was postponed to the next session 
of Court and he returned to his imprisonment. 
At the next session the jailer's son offered to give 
bail for Fox and let him have his freedom. The 



IN WORCESTER JAIL 1 55 

Court decided to let him go at large without bail 
until the next Court sessions, because they were 
thoroughly convinced that he was not a dangerous 
subject. By this provision he was allowed to go 
up to London and attend the yearly meeting in 
May, 1674. 

Soon after this meeting was over, which was 
"glorious beyond expression/' Fox returned to 
Worcester again for trial. The old bugaboo of 
the oath came up again, and the Court now threat- 
ened to inflict the sentence of prcemunire upon him 
if he continued to refuse the oath. He faced 
the terrible penalty unmoved and went back to 
prison. A serious attack of illness came upon him 
soon after this and he appears to have gone through 
another experience of a similar sort to those al- 
ready described. Death seemed to hover over 
him and yet an invisible power sustained and re- 
freshed the broken man. "One night/' he says, 
"as I was lying awake upon my bed in the glory 
of the Lord, which was over all, it was said unto 
me, 'The Lord has a great deal more work for 
thee to do for Him, before He takes thee to Him- 
self.'" With this consciousness of divine love and 
care he could face the lonely days and the hard 
fare and even the weakness of his prison-worn 
body. 

Meantime Margaret Fox went to see the King 
in person and to plead for justice to her long-suffer- 



I56 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

ing husband. The only way out seemed to be a 
pardon from the King, but Fox would not accept 
a pardon. A pardon would indicate that he was 
guilty and that he would not admit. "I had 
rather lain in prison all my days," Fox says, "than 
have come out in any way dishonorable to the 
truth." He insisted on a fair trial and a chance 
to defend himself. It was finally decided to bring 
him up once more to London, for trial before the 
King's Bench. Thomas Corbet, an able councillor 
at law, pleaded his case before Sir Matthew 
Hale, the Chief Justice. A complete victory was 
won. The indictment was quashed, and Fox 
was granted his liberty. Some of the old adver- 
saries who had dogged him at each session, tried 
to induce the Chief Justice to demand the oath of 
him, on the ground that he was a dangerous man 
and ought not to be allowed at large. Judge 
Hale replied that he had heard rumors that George 
Fox was dangerous, but that he had heard many 
more reports that he was a good man — and he 
ordered the unconquerable man freed by proclama- 
tion. He had been under arrest and imprisonment 
for fourteen months. He was freed in time to 
attend London Yearly Meeting in 1675 — a ti me 
when "the everlasting power of God" was mani- 
fested, and toward the end of June he was once 
more permitted to be in Swarthmore Hall with 
his wife. Colonel Kirkby, his old persecutor, now 



IN WORCESTER JAIL I57 

changed and softened, came to visit him in the 
Hall and bid him welcome into the country, and, 
Fox says, "he carried himself very lovingly !" 

However attractive Swarthmore Hall must 
have seemed after American forests and Worcester 
prison quarters, nothing could long hold George 
Fox from his religious travels. The "Seed" in 
England needed him, and in a very short time 
he was off again on long journeys through the 
counties. Now one Friend and now another ac- 
companied him and everywhere in Quaker com- 
munities he was welcomed and appreciated. He 
steadily improved the organization and the disci- 
pline; he corrected errors and wrong practices; he 
encouraged the weak and he aroused and inspired 
the whole membership. 

In 1677, a new field of foreign service opened 
for him and with old time enthusiasm he prepared 
for new dangers and struggles. "It was," he 
says, "upon me from the Lord to go to Holland, 
to visit Friends and to preach the gospel there, 
and in some parts of Germany." His two great 
friends, William Penn and Robert Barclay, went 
on this journey with him. Besides these two 
pillars he had also in his company George Keith, 
John Furley, Isabel Yeamans Fox's step-daughter, 
and a number of others. They found many 
Friends in Holland and many more people who 
were near-Friends and sympathetic with the teach- 



I58 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

ings of Fox. They held great meetings and debated 
with Baptists and Seekers and Brownists and many 
more little groups of Christians. Fox says that 
"the everlasting truth was declared among them." 
One of the most interesting episodes of this visit 
was the happy fellowship with Princess Elizabeth, 
one of the most remarkable women in Europe 
at this time. She was the granddaughter of King 
James I. of England and the daughter of Frederick, 
Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia. She was 
a great scholar, a friend of Descartes, the philoso- 
pher, and she was a devoted earnest Christian, 
always eager to learn more truth and to discover 
more light. William Penn and Robert Barclay 
had already visited her at a former time. Fox 
was unable to have a personal visit with her, and 
so he wrote her a religious epistle setting forth to 
her his views and teaching, which he sent by the 
hand of his step-daughter. Princess Elizabeth 
greatly appreciated it and wrote him a beautiful 
answer, in which she promised to follow his advice 
as far as God should give her light to do so. 

George Fox, with an interpreter, took an ex- 
tensive journey in Germany, visiting many Ger- 
man cities and hunting out groups of mystics and 
spiritual people who were prepared for his message. 
Many were reached and convinced, and some who 
later came to find homes in Pennsylvania were 
first drawn to Friends by this famous visit in 1677. 



IN WORCESTER JAIL I59 

Fox went over to Holland again, but not to Ger- 
many, in 1684. On this second visit he met most 
of the Friends on the Continent, especially those 
in Holland and Germany, at a great meeting 
in Amsterdam. He had at this time an interesting 
visit with a very remarkable Dutchman named 
Galenus Abrahams, a leader among the "Seekers" 
in Holland. William Penn and Robert Barclay 
had debated with him on the former visit, but 
Fox had not taken part in the debate, because 
Abrahams refused to discuss with him. When 
Fox fixed his gaze upon him and started to talk 
with him, he became embarrassed and cried out: 
"Take thy eyes off me; they pierce me!" But on 
this second visit Abrahams changed and was 
"very loving and tender and confessed in some 
measure to truth." These two journeys to the 
Continent complete the foreign travels of George 
Fox. His "disciples" went to almost all parts 
of the world. They made their way to the Sultan; 
they visited the Pope; they went to the uttermost 
parts of the earth. But he felt that his duty lay 
for the most part in building up the Society which 
had grown up around him in England. 

There were still some serious returns of per- 
secution. As of old, George Fox was always to 
be found where the danger was the greatest. 
When the arrests under the Conventicle Law be- 
came thick and frequent in 1683, he always went 



l6o THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

to the London meeting which was most likely to 
be invaded by the officers, and once again, though 
now an old and broken man, he risked the chance 
of a new imprisonment, but it did not fall upon 
him this time. His imprisonments were over. 
In 1688 a great release of prisoners for conscience' 
sake was made by the King. Many hundreds 
of Friends came forth from the cells where they 
had lain for months and years, and great joy 
thrilled through the heart of Fox to see his friends 
free. From this time until his death Fox traveled 
less and slowed down in his labors. His body 
was not able any longer to stand the strains it 
once had borne. He found himself compelled 
to go to the country frequently for fresh air, as 
London, with its fogs, seemed to oppress him. 
He was often in the country with William Penn, 
watching the shaping of the great plans for the 
new colony in America, and when he was not 
preaching or journeying he was writing tracts 
and epistles and books. There were two periods 
between his last great imprisonment and his death, 
when he spent a good deal of time at Swarthmore 
Hall. His wife was deeply affectionate toward 
him, her daughters loved him like an own father, 
and he would have had the tenderest care if he 
could have felt free to spend his declining years 
in that quiet retreat, but he was fashioned for 
struggle and service, and he had to work while any 



IN WORCESTER JAIL l6l 

strength remained. So long as his body held his 
tireless spirit in it, he was always moving forward 
and always busy with some work for the spread 
of the truth and the light, but, whether he thought 
about it or not, his body was wearing out and was 
fast approaching its limit of endurance. "I was 
hardly able," he says in 1688, the year of the great 
English Revolution, "to stay in a meeting the 
whole time; and after a meeting I had to lie down 
on a bed." 



CHAPTER XVI 

"all of god almighty's making" 

On the tenth of January, 1691, George Fox 
went on First Day morning (Sunday) to Grace- 
Church Street Meeting in London. It was a very 
large meeting and, persecution now being over, 
it was quiet and undisturbed by officers. George 
Fox preached on that occasion the last sermon 
of his life. Those who heard it felt that it opened 
"many deep and weighty things with great power 
and clearness." Then, having finished his sermon, 
he kneeled down and prayed, with his whole 
being moved, his face radiant and his spirit full 
of reverence and awe. Under the covering of 
that mighty prayer the meeting closed, the people 
all shook hands and scattered to their homes. 
Fox went home with Henry Goldney in White 
Hart Court, near the meetinghouse by that name. 
A little group of devoted Friends walked with him, 
still under the spell and power of the great meeting, 
just ended. As they went quietly along through 
the street, Fox told his Friends that he felt a 
chill come over him and a cold seemed to strike 
into his heart. "But," he added, "I am glad I 
was there at that meeting; now I am clear, I am 

162 



"all of god almighty's making" 163 

fully clear." That fine old word "clear" meant 
that he had done his full duty and had completely 
finished what God had given him to do. 

He often found it necessary to lie down for a 
little while after he had preached a powerful 
sermon, for all his vital powers seemed exhausted 
with the pouring out of his spirit, and he thought 
at first that this chill was only a result of his 
usual weakness of body after a great effort. 
He soon got up from the bed and tried to walk 
about, but there was no strength to command his 
body. It was quite worn out and had come at 
last to the full end of what it could do. He soon 
returned to his bed and lay peaceful and contented, 
like a tired child tucked comfortably into bed by 
its mother. His mind remained clear and un- 
clouded. He had once before in his life seen that 
there was an ocean of darkness and death, but that 
an infinite ocean of light and love flowed over the 
ocean of darkness, and so now he rested calm and 
undisturbed in the consciousness of the infinite 
love of God. 

He talked much about spreading the truth and 
how after he was gone the work must still go 
forward by pen and word. There was no sign of 
fear, no note of sadness, no mark of defeat. Once 
he said to those about him: "All is well; the 
Seed of God reigns over all and over death itself. 
I am weak of body but the power of God is over 



164 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

all." For nearly three days the final illness lasted, 
with steadily increasing weakness of body and 
growing triumph of spirit. The ancient account 
very happily says: "He lay in a heavenly frame 
of mind, and between the hours of nine and ten 
in the evening of the third day of the week, he 
quietly departed this life in peace, and sweetly 
fell asleep in the Lord, whose blessed truth he had 
livingly and powerfully preached." 

His Friends from far and near flocked in to the 
great funeral in White Hart Court meetinghouse, 
where the story of the labors and dangers and 
sufferings of the valiant life were lovingly told 
and the beauty and sublimity of his faith in God 
were set forth with the triumphs of truth which 
he proclaimed. Then his Friends bore the worn- 
out body to its last resting place among the graves 
of faithful martyrs for the light, in Bunhill-Fields. 

His "Dear Heart," Margaret, wrote a beautiful 
and affectionate testimony to his memory and the 
Morning Meeting in London sent out to all 
Friends everywhere a tender epistle giving an 
account of what the Lord had done through this 
faithful servant of the truth. But the most 
remarkable of all the sincere personal apprecia- 
tions of George Fox was the one written by his 
intimate friend and fellow-laborer, William Penn. 
It is done in beautiful style. It breathes a noble 
spirit and it reveals the genuine character of the 



"all of god almighty's making" 165 

man whom it seeks to portray. It touches upon 
simple traits of his person and of his behavior and 
it also deals with the deepest features of his inner 
soul. He tells us that his friend was "civil in his 
behavior/' i. e., refined, "beyond all forms of 
breeding"; "very temperate, eating little and 
sleeping less, though a bulky person." Though he 
had little book-learning and was ignorant of what 
passed in his day for science, yet "he had in him," 
Penn says, " the foundation of all useful and com- 
mendable knowledge and cherished it everywhere," 
and he always showed surprising skill in answer- 
ing difficult questions. In short, in a fine, swift 
phrase Penn says: " In all things he aquitted himself 
like a man, yea a strong man, a new and heavenly- 
minded man; a divine and a naturalist and all 
of God Almighty's making" He dwells tenderly 
upon the way people loved his dear friend "with 
unfeigned and unfading love"; of his majestic 
presence; of his awful, living, reverent frame in 
prayer; of his power to discern other persons' 
spirits and to master his own; of the unique and 
original quality of his personality; of his ability 
to go to the heart and marrow of things and of 
his power to stand the universe, with its storms 
and waterspouts. With a light and splendid touch 
he indicates the final triumph over death: "As 
he lived, so he died; feeling the same eternal power, 
that had raised and preserved him, in his last 



1 66 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

moments. So full of assurance was he, that he 
triumphed over death; and so even in his spirit to 
the last, as if death were hardly worth notice or a 
mention." 

Such, then, was our new kind of hero, who 
lived and wrought and suffered for the truth 
and for the kingdom of Christ. His religious 
message, like the man himself, was direct, clear 
and simple. He would have nothing to do with 
sham or insincerity or artificial schemes. Reli- 
gion for him was a way of living, not merely 
something written in a book. It begins with a 
vital experience of the living God, who is near at 
hand, dwelling, moving, working, speaking in man's 
heart. Every time something in the soul points 
out the right course of action and reveals what 
is wrong, God is there. Whenever truth triumphs 
over error and light over darkness and purity over 
evil and goodness over wickedness and love over 
hate there God is working His work of the new 
creation in the world to-day. His kingdom comes 
as fast as people like us turn toward the true light 
and love it and follow it and do it. God is not 
far off above the sky or hidden in the past history 
of the world, a Being who once revealed Himself 
to a chosen few and then ceased to speak to human 
hearts. He is always speaking to men, always 
sending out His light and love, always revealing 
His will. He is as near the soul as is the air to the 



a 



ALL OF GOD ALMIGHTY^ MAKING " l6j 



bird. This was the central teaching of George 
Fox, and something like this he preached through 
the English counties and along the Atlantic coast- 
line of America, in the West Indies, in Wales, in 
Ireland, in Scotland, in Holland and in Germany. 

This idea, this " truth," he always called it, 
made him believe in the infinite preciousness and 
worth of every person in the world. Close be- 
hind the human face was the holy habitation of 
God. Here within was the only true temple and 
here every listening soul, no matter how poor or 
how humble, might hear the voice of the infinite 
One. It made him believe, too, that woman was 
in every way man's companion and equal. One 
was not more precious or more exalted than the 
other. Through both alike God could speak and 
through both alike He could do His spiritual work 
for the making of a new world after the divine 
pattern. He did not debate about women's rights. 
He proclaimed their equal privilege and respon- 
sibility with men and called upon them to rise 
up and do the mighty work in the world for which 
they were made. 

He gave a new importance to silence in worship. 
If God was near the soul, as he kept saying He 
was, then one way to discover Him and to hear 
His voice speaking was to become quiet and still, 
so that He could be heard. When we wish to 
hear an important message over the telephone we 



l68 THE STORY OF GEORGE FOX 

prepare for it by hushing all conversation and un- 
necessary noises in the room. We give the mes- 
sage a chance to reach us, which it would not have 
if the din prevailed around us. So, too, with the 
greatest of all messages, we must prepare for it. 
We must listen before we talk. We must hearken 
before we speak. Because George Fox believed 
this he arranged for periods of silence in his meet- 
ings. He preferred to listen rather than to speak 
and only to speak after he had heard God speak. 
He taught that, in any case, religion is not 
words, words, words, but real experience of God. 
It is always better to see a sunset than to hear a 
description of one; it is worth much more to see 
the Sistine Madonna than to read about it in a 
book; it is much more thrilling to climb a moun- 
tain peak than to see a picture of a man climbing 
one; and it is infinitely more important to feel the 
tender presence of the living God than it is to 
hear somebody tell how Abraham and Elijah, 
ages ago, felt it. George Fox knew this fact, he 
himself had had this firsthand experience and he 
called his generation to get the same experience 
for themselves. He meant to put vital religion 
within the reach of everybody. He wanted to 
make everybody his own priest. He hoped to 
make religion as free and as universal as sunlight 
and air. He tried to reproduce in the world of 
his day the kind of Church which the New Testa- 



"all of god almighty's making" 169 

ment tells about in its wonderful pages. It would 
be a Church in which everybody should have a 
part and a share. It would be a Church with 
Christ for the real Head of it, a Church with the 
living Spirit of God moving and working in all its 
members. It would be a Church through which 
the will of God was constantly being freshly re- 
vealed, a living, growing, expanding, transforming 
Church. 

Because he believed these things he was a man , 
full of faith and hope and good cheer. "The Seed 
of God reigns," were his living words as well as 
his dying words. "An ocean of light and love 
flows over the ocean of darkness." You cannot 
down a man who has a faith like that. Prisons 
have no terror for him, persecution does not break 
his nerve. He knows that God is really working 
all things up to better and that the brave man can 
wait in patience. "Love the truth," he once said, 
"more than all, and go on in the mighty power of 
God as good soldiers of Jesus Christ." We can 
surely agree with the testimony which his intimate 
friend Thomas Ellwood gave him: He was "val- 
iant for the Truth, bold in asserting it, patient in 
suffering for it, unwearied in laboring for it, steady 
in his testimony to it, immovable as a rock." A 
man who lived that way had a right to say, as he 
faced death unmoved, "I am clear, I am fully 
clear." 

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